Adopting a "Standard Model"

One of the biggest problems with the way we have hyper-localized the response to homelessness in this country is that as a sector / industry / movement, we have failed to create a common understanding of how the parts of a homeless system of care typically fit together. 

Worse, we often use inconsistent terminology or even attempt to rebrand what are essentially the  same interventions, thus making it even harder for both policymakers AND people experiencing homelessness to understand how our systems operate. 

This isn't just a thought experiment.

As we saw last week, this fragmentation fuels extremely harmful feedback loops that prevent us from making more progress as a sector. 

Instead of aligning and standardizing, we seem 

to have a bias towards creating new programs and efforts,

which then make it even harder to see the bigger picture.

This complexity is hardest on the most vulnerable, who

can get lost in or burned by our systems, understandably

disengage, and then become harder to serve in the process.

And despite the best of intentions, we're increasingly stuck

in a cycle of reinventing the wheel, rather than

 incorporating and improving on what's already working.

Momentum for a "Standard Model"

This newsletter (and its associated website) have two fundamental goals:

1. Help our sector develop, refine, and adopt a "standard model" of how homeless systems of care fit together
2. Once established, use this framework to help our sector spark, sustain, and accelerate strategic momentum 

Let's start with #1 - what do I mean by a "standard model"?

In the summer of 2022, I published the book So You Want to Solve Homelessness? Start Here. I spent close to 5 years writing that book, but what's funny in hindsight is that it wasn't until about chapter 20 (or 4 years into the process) that it occurred to me - if a reader was completely brand new to our movement, had I actually defined what the basic building blocks of our systems of care are and how they fit together? Did I even know myself?

What followed was my first attempt to visualize the "typical" ways in which people tend to move through our systems of care. 

After the book, I continued to experiment and iterate (with the help of many of you!). 

Gradually, the framework went from reading top-down to left-right. 

I added detail. 

I removed detail. 

I shifted and re-shifted the position of different components.

I used it for strategic planning and to facilitate change management efforts (and modified and revised it again and again based on how those efforts went).

The current version is in color below. 

Version 1.0 (from the book)

Version 4.0 (from my garage)

Version 7.0 (iterating with communities)

Version ??? (CURRENT)

"STEPS"

STEPS is intended to be a simple and jargon-free way for any provider, leader, or advocate to visualize how the pieces of a homeless system of care usually fit together.

S - Societal 

• Societal Influences - The policies and conditions that are making it more likely for individual crises to result in episodes of homelessness (e.g., the cost of rental housing, declining real wages, the racial wealth gap, lack of access to behavioral health services)

T - Triage

• Prevention - Trying to stop homelessness before it starts (typically involves legal, financial, and / or short-term case management assistance)
• Self-Resolve - At all stages there are a significant number of people who figure out a solution to their housing crisis on their own without our help - that's not a bad thing

E - Engagement 

• Coordination - The data sharing, case conferencing, project management, and other service navigation processes that coordinate efforts across providers
• Outreach - Social workers or case managers who engage people experiencing literal homelessness
• Basic Needs - Services to help people with basic survival (e.g., drop-in centers, food, hygiene, laundry) 
• Shelter - Short-term lodgings to help people avoid sleeping on the street (can take many forms, including: congregate, non-congregate, safe parking, tiny homes, motel vouchers, safe sleeping, etc.)

P - Placement 

• Short-Term Assistance - Trying to find rapid, light touch solutions outside of the traditional homeless service system, such as one-time financial assistance and/or reconnecting a person with family or friends (often called diversion, problem-solving, or rapid exits)
• Medium-Term Assistance - Time-bound case management and housing assistance for people who have a path back to self-sufficiency (generally this is rapid rehousing programs) 
• Long-Term Assistance - Ongoing subsidized housing that includes wraparound support services (this is generally permanent supportive housing)
• Finding Units - The actual process of identifying housing units, whether through landlord recruitment, building new housing, master-leasing, or shared housing

S - Systems 

"STEP" is intended to show how the actual programmatic building blocks tend to fit together. For how complicated our work often feels, I'm continually amazed that if you really boil it down, there are just nine basic programmatic components to our systems.

Importantly, all of these programmatic components are undergirded by a second S - Systems. This refers to the more intangible principles and practices that tie all of these pieces together:

• Leadership - The strategy, leaders, and processes that help to foster system-level coordination, efficiency, and effectiveness
• Funding - Ensuring our efforts are sufficiently resourced, funding is aligned, and investments are tied to financial benchmarks 
• Workforce - The well-being, professional development, and retention of the actual people doing the work, from frontline staff to middle managers to executive leadership
• Equity - Making sure our systems are not perpetuating and exacerbating the existing inequities driving who becomes homeless in this country
• Customers - Ensuring our programs and policies are informed by the people who are affected by them
• Data - Establishing the right metrics and outcomes to measure and drive progress and accountability 
• Story - The ways we engage with and market our efforts to the broader community and public
• Advocacy - How we come together to effectively advocate for the upstream policy changes that will prevent homelessness in the first place

The Fundamental Strategic Insight

After 15 years in this work, I have had the great fortune to work in a wide variety of different communities, while also learning from and networking with even more.

In recent years, as I started having a "standard model" like STEPS in the back of my mind, I started noticing something interesting. 

It first happened with "shelter."

In one county, I saw a shelter provider permanently housing 50-70% of its clients, depending on the year. 

In the next county over, which was literally divided by an arbitrary line through a field, a comparably-sized shelter provider was only permanently housing about 10% of its clients. 

Then I saw it with "long-term" placements.

In one county, permanent supportive housing programs only had about a 70% retention rate after one year. The next county over, they had a system-level PSH retention rate of about 94% after four years.  

Then I saw it with encampment closures, which I view as part of "coordination."

In some parts of the country, communities are lucky if 10% of people go into shelter at the time of an encampment closure. 

In other parts of the country, however, upwards of 70%+ of people are moving directly into permanent housing at the time of an encampment closure (and overall rates of unsheltered homelessness are dropping significantly as a result). 

This gradually led to a very strong - perhaps completely obvious - conclusion:

If the building blocks of homeless systems of care are generally the same in every community, then it stands to reason that if you compared all of the various approaches to a given building block, optimal approaches would emerge (i.e., best practices). 

Therefore, the fastest and most effective way to increase local system performance is to identify an underperforming part of the system, look outside of that community at all of the ways other communities are addressing that component, pick the most effective practice that works within the local context, implement it, and repeat. 

Indeed, when you look at the core strategic drive in the communities that are making the most progress around homelessness, I would argue that they are all engaging in some version this ongoing questioning:

• #1 - Do we have the best version of each component (or group of components)?
• #2A - If not, how do we adopt known best practices as quickly as possible?
• #2B - If yes, how do we design experiments for continual, marginal improvement?

The core strategic question for me, which we'll keep tackling through this newsletter, is how can this  mindset / strategy / culture / change management process become the standard operating structure of our sector? How can we overcome the last 40 years of fragmentation and hyper-localization to instead regularly come together, learn, spark inspiration, and drive true accountability around what actually works. 

We are without a doubt in one of the lowest moments in the history of modern homelessness, and we have two options:

1. We can either despair over the external challenges that are frankly completely outside of our control, or
2. We can take a hard look in the mirror, accept the need to fundamentally reorganize the structure of our movement, and rise up as one unified front.

If we can do that, then when the tide turns, when the pendulum begins to swing in the other direction, we will be well-positioned with the strategy and mindset to make unprecedented progress. 

Please Help Spread the Word

If there are practitioners, leaders, and Change Makers who you think should be reading this information, I would deeply appreciate you sharing this post with them. 

Thank you so much for your partnership!