The Denver Foundation’s Post

have you got some ideas on how to deal with homelessness in the city of Austin? Give David Gray a holler.

The Perth South West Metropolitan Alliance recently had a productive meeting with the City of Los Angeles' Housing and Homelessness leadership. We met with Lourdes Castro Ramirez (Chief Housing and Homelessness Officer), Kevin Keller (Deputy Mayor of Housing), and Senator Kevin Murray (ret) (President & CEO, Weingart Center Association). Some really great insights into their approach and perhaps the most valuable lessons are: ·      The community doesn’t care who is responsible - they want all tiers of government to take action. ·      There will always be a need for interim housing solutions. ·      There is no one size fits all solution; and ·      This isn’t a problem that can be solved in a boardroom – you need to speak to people working on the ground. One practice of note was the City’s using the fast-tracking of utility connections for developments with social housing as an incentive. These lessons could help shape responses to homelessness challenges in Perth.

The issue of homelessness transcends mere lack of shelter, encompassing a complex interplay of social exclusionary factors that only exacerbate poverty, limit opportunities and create barriers to full participation in society. Effectively addressing homelessness demands more than short term fixes. It requires holistic solutions that go beyond housing to facilitate meaningful societal integration that break the cycle of housing instability permanently.

Santa Clara County has found success with a reformed homelessness prevention program that removes many of the restrictions that can impede the effectiveness of traditional homelessness prevention programs. "Santa Clara County’s Homeless Prevention System, or HPS, is a program administered by a network of local nonprofits that provides financial assistance to tenants at risk of eviction HPS is part of a family of interventions predicated on the notion that the cheapest way to address homelessness is by keeping struggling tenants from being turned out on the streets in the first place. Most other eviction-prevention programs demand proof of stability and will only work with those who have temporary issues like an unexpected expense. Santa Clara's HPS is different, providing assistance without a pre-set time limit for people who were are still housed but on the brink. HPS recognizes that the challenges its clients face aren’t likely to be over in a month. A parent might need several months of financial assistance to figure out how to pivot out of working three jobs, or take the time to get trained to seize a new opportunity, or to extract themselves from an unaffordable housing situation. Most of the funds go out in direct payment to landlords, but it can also be used for gas and car payments or to pay for other bills., The no-strings-attached assistance, which averages $6,000 to $7,000 per household over four months, also has a wider community impact: For every $1 spent, the community saw $2.47 in benefits, the 2023 study concluded. Approximately 95% of families that used the service remained in stable homes. Defenders of this proactive aid model emphasize that societal costs start to spiral once people are out on the streets, where job loss, contact with the criminal justice system and emergency room visits can quickly follow. Research found that the highest acuity, or most serious, homeless residents cost the county $85,000 annually. It makes the $6,000 it might take to stabilize a resident’s finances over several months look like a bargain."

Read this last fall and it deepened my thinking about the root causes of homelessness, and what we can do to end it. While no single actor, organization, or locality can solve the housing crisis, we can start by acknowledging the housing market as a key driver of homelessness, rather than other, more popular but often less data-driven explanations like mental health, welcoming climates, or red/blue state housing policies. Can't recommend the book enough if you're looking to learn more about homelessness and the housing crisis. Shout-out to KCPL for spotlighting this issue and focusing the conversation on this central text.

The Promise Tracker is one of the LAist | Southern California Public Radio projects that I'm most proud to have worked on in the last year. It came out of the massive citywide survey we ran during the first three months of Mayor Karen Bass's administration exploring what Angelenos wanted her to prioritize. The strongest theme in the responses was: We elected you to do something about homelessness, and we need to see proof that progress is happening. So we asked ourselves: How can we help people track that progress for themselves, rather than expecting them to take our word (or the administration's word) that progress is or isn't happening? How can we help them *make sense* of all the numbers that the city is sure to regularly share over the next year, as Bass tries to reach her goal of housing 17,000 Angelenos in her first year? You can check out the Promise Tracker (which we update each time we get new data) at laist.com/promisetracker and you can hear an update on the numbers from the powerful duo that made this possible (Brianna Lee and Nick Gerda) in this episode of How to LA https://lnkd.in/gpKJhAHw UPDATE: I got so much outreach about this post that I ended up writing up why and how we took this approach. You can read that here: https://lnkd.in/gF6Up43E

There are now well tested, ready-to-implement solutions that help people successfully and humanely regain housing while simultaneously and successfully closing encampments (permanently) to address community concerns. The only barrier: elected officials. Every sensible person who cares about ending the daily trauma people are experience being unsheltered, and the challenges and concerns this causes for the greater community, should be demanding elected officials support cost effective solutions like the street to housing model Mandy and her team are helping communities implement. These aren't too expensive or beyond our means, as other public health emergencies have shown us. In fact, not doing this - not addressing the public health emergency that is homelessness with solutions and not shackles will cost us all so much more.

Housing is human right.

I wrote a short blog post for the Homeless Hub called "Finding Community in Encampments." "The research on encampments is clear that, when they are stable, encampments offer a sense of belonging, friendship, and connection that can outweigh the support offered by the shelter systems. Although encampments are not a substitute for permanent, affordable housing, 'until that housing is available to everyone, encampments provide a much-needed community of care.'" https://lnkd.in/dsbJw-Mh The blog post is based on an excellent research brief by Erin Dej, Kiffer Card, and Kaitlin Humer -- it is linked in the post.

Thanks to all who came out to the screening of Beyond The Bridge: A Solution To Homelessness - we filled Clowe's Hall! If you weren't able to join us we're working on additional Indianapolis screenings, stay tuned. That was the first step - now we have to get to work! Mayor Hogsett acknowledged that we need a, "Comprehensive solution, what's proven successful in other cities is political will and leadership. The solution is housing... homelessness is solvable in Indianapolis." OK Mayor Hogsett, we need you to put your words into action. Let's hold Mayor Hogsett and his administration accountable and remind him that Indianapolis must take action. Words are lovely - we expect action! For this to work, we need Mayor Hogsett to: • Bring all stakeholders together in the next 60 days and announce, "We are doing this!" • Create a homelessness director staff position in his administration that has authority to make decisions. • Include the experts at CHIP on the mayor's cabinet. • The newly formed task force, the "Kitchen Cabinet," must include the leaders of OPHS, DMD, and mayor's office, as well as community leaders, service professionals, and those with lived experience. Contact him now! • Email Mayor Hogsett using this form • Facebook @mayorjoeforindy • X (Twitter) @IndyMayorJoe • Instagram @mayorjoeforindy