PREVENTING FAMILY AND YOUTH HOMELESNESS Katharine Gale National Conference on Ending Family and Youth Homelessness Houston, TX February 24, 2017 kgaleconsulting@sbcglobal.net

What is Homelessness Prevention? Efforts aimed to help low-income households resolve a crisis that would otherwise lead to a loss of housing.

What is Homelessness Prevention? Most common homelessness prevention efforts include short-term financial assistance, housing-related support services, legal assistance, discharge planning or all of these.

What is Homelessness Prevention? Effective prevention may stabilize a household in their current housing or help them to move to new housing without requiring they become literally homeless or pass through the shelter system first in order to receive help.

Why is prevention hard to do well?

Effectiveness and Efficiency “Effective activities must be capable of stopping someone from becoming homeless or ending their homelessness quickly. An efficient system must target well, delivering its effective activities to people who are very likely to become homeless unless they receive help.” (Burt et al. 2007, p.xvii, italics in original) The literature on homelessness prevention agrees on these inherent challenges to effective and efficient homelessness prevention. Virtually every study points out that while there is a large pool of people who might become homeless at any given time, only a small number of them actually do. Prevention programs are faced with the challenge of designing targeting strategies that identify those most-likely to become homeless and then providing those individuals, and as far as possible only them, with support that is sufficient to prevent them from becoming homeless.

The issue of targeting…

Which of these statements is true? People who become homeless are the same as other very low-income people. People who become homeless are different from other very low-income people.

Which statement is true? RIGHT! They both are! People who become homeless are different from the general population and from other poor people: Households with one person (63% of homeless, 10% of US households) Mentally ill (16.3% of lowest income v. 28% of shelter residents) Veterans (15% v. 5% of poverty population)

BUT…. There are many more people who share theses characteristics who don’t become homeless than do! Less than 0.5% of all Veterans were homeless About 2% of people with mental illness were homeless 1.4% of one-person households were homeless

Like risk factors for a disease… Having a risk factor, or even several, does not mean that you will get the disease. Most women who have one or more breast cancer risk factors never develop the disease, while many women with breast cancer have no apparent risk factors (other than being a woman and growing older).

Lots of very poor people… few homeless people Lots of people face a housing crisis but not all of them become homeless, even when it looks like they will Lots of mobility and instability. According to census: 12% of Americans moved in in one year 19% of unemployed Americans moved Over 30% of single female-headed households with small children (under 6) moved Many many more people move, get behind on rent, are evicted, double up, or change housing than become homeless

Typical Programs Unlikely to Reach Those With Greatest Need Typical model screens out high need families and doesn’t reach people at the right time Interviews with homeless families in Alameda County: Most stayed with family or friends prior to recognizing a need to seek help Few knew of any prevention assistance or the 211 hot line: Those few who had called were not successful in getting prevention assistance. None would have qualified because they could not show they had enough income to sustain their housing Most of the households interviewed experienced an interim period after losing their housing and prior to entering an emergency shelter during which they stayed with various family members or friends. During this period, most were not connected with any resources to help them to identify long term affordable housing or assist them to address other barriers to housing. Only four of nineteen households indicated making use of Information and Referral from the “211” resource line. Most households had not recently had their own housing. The four households which had recently been residing in their own housing where they were paying rent had lost their housing due to an inability to pay rent. In all four cases the family’s income was inadequate to sustain the housing over time and would have required a longer term rent subsidy in order to maintain them in their current housing.

Improving Our Prevention Efforts Target households that are most likely to become homeless Base targeting on who actually becomes homeless in your community Connect prevention to Coordinated Entry Use data to track outcomes If possible track outcomes for both the people you serve and you don’t Hard to prove a counterfactual – may look like you are doing a good job, but could be serving the wrong people Most of the households interviewed experienced an interim period after losing their housing and prior to entering an emergency shelter during which they stayed with various family members or friends. During this period, most were not connected with any resources to help them to identify long term affordable housing or assist them to address other barriers to housing. Only four of nineteen households indicated making use of Information and Referral from the “211” resource line. Most households had not recently had their own housing. The four households which had recently been residing in their own housing where they were paying rent had lost their housing due to an inability to pay rent. In all four cases the family’s income was inadequate to sustain the housing over time and would have required a longer term rent subsidy in order to maintain them in their current housing.