It's Possible to Change
This website is premised on two simple “truths,” which have taken the better part of 15 years to learn and accept.
#1 - Modern homelessness is a symptom.
Despite our best efforts to advance a simple explanation of what’s driving this crisis, the truth is that there is no singular cause of modern homelessness. Instead, modern homelessness is the result of a portfolio of interconnected and reinforcing challenges.
Beginning in the early 1980s and accelerating to the present, a number of long-term societal and socioeconomic trends have converged:
- Rising rental housing costs
- Declining real wages
- The racial wealth gap
- Broken behavioral health systems
- Domestic violence and household instability
- America's loneliness crisis and declining levels of social capital
- Exits to homelessness from healthcare, justice, and foster care systems
- The erosion of broader social safety nets and assistance
The cumulative impact of these combined issues has been the reduction of economic capacity for the most vulnerable among us. This economic vulnerability, in turn, has made it much more likely for individual and household crises to result in episodes of homelessness, especially in our country's most expensive rental housing markets.
#2 - In a fundamental way, we - the people working to end homelessness - do not control any of these upstream challenges. Instead, the only thing we have any real influence over is the nature of the response.
Empowerment
On one hand, this lack of control is a tough pill to swallow.
It is so easy to get [insert demoralizing feeling] about all of the seemingly intractable issues driving our work. I can assure you I’ve felt all of the feelings and am not diminishing their weight and personal impact.
On the other hand, we're not powerless. Far from it.
By being crystal clear about what we can in fact change, like the subtle but beautiful constraints of a haiku poem, we are actually empowered into a certain freedom.
The strategy, structure, investments, standards, policies, and procedures within a homeless system of care, all up to us.
What we measure, if and how we choose to learn from others, our approach to project management and system accountability, again all up to us.
Our advocacy agenda, the way we engage the broader public, how we support each other in this work, the extent to which we meaningful incorporate the feedback of people using our systems, you see where this is going ...
Have you ever asked someone in your community “Hey, why do we do it this way?” And they tell you “I don’t know, that’s just the way it’s always been done.”
That is exactly what I’m talking about.
We don't need to settle for that.
We can't keep settling for that.
It's Possible to Change
I know all about this dynamic - feeling stuck in a broken status quo - because I have experienced it firsthand.
I also know for a fact that it is possible to break free of this dynamic, to completely redesign and restructure systems of care, and to drive dramatic transformation.
I joined the movement to end homelessness in the summer of 2010 as an AmeriCorps Vista doing street outreach and organizing resources fairs in Santa Clara County, CA (i.e., Silicon Valley).
After my year of service, I started working for a nonprofit focused on helping people obtain jobs and housing, and in 2013, I had the opportunity to launch of a branch of that organization in Marin County, CA, the affluent suburban county north of San Francisco.
I remember thinking it was going to be so easy solving homelessness in Marin.
- There was an enormous amount of undeveloped land, which I imagined we could use for new housing.
- It was extremely politically “liberal,” which - coupled with having wealthy residents - meant we would surely have the resources to drive change.
As I would later come to learn when writing a book about the upstream causes of the modern homelessness crisis, ironically, these underlying conditions are actually some of the greatest predictors of modern homelessness.
Thus, to my complete and utter surprise, by 2017, according to a report from the Bay Area Economic Institute and McKinsey Consulting, Marin County had the 7th higher per capita rate of homelessness in the entire country.
Not only were things "quantitatively" bad based on numbers like this, but they were qualitatively bad too.
Like communities all across the country, homelessness - particularly unsheltered chronic homelessness - had become acutely concentrated in the downtown area of Marin’s largest city, San Rafael (where I eventually led homelessness strategies). This, of course, drove significant public conflict and polarization around what to do, and it eventually culminated in calls for the City to revoke the use permit of a local service provider.
Behind the scenes, despite telling the community we were collaborating, we - the people tasked with responding to this crisis - were fighting, viewed each other as competitors, and couldn’t agree on anything.
But then something amazing happened. We changed.
Between 2017 and 2019, we witnessed a:
- 7% overall drop in homelessness
- 28% drop in chronic homelessness
- 30% drop in unsheltered homelessness in San Rafael
Not only was this progress significant, but it happened during a time when big change didn't seem possible.
It was the first Trump administration when Ben Carson was the HUD Secretary, and we faced constant resource constraints.
The housing market wasn't improving. Many communities claim to have the worst, but Marin is objectively one of the most expensive rental markets in the country, and that trend worsened every year we made progress.
And there were no new funders or significant resource infusions, despite the community's wealth.
Instead, this progress came from something deeper and much more profound ...
Building Real, Enduring Momentum
When you look around the country, even around the world, the most dramatic examples of reducing and ending homelessness have one thing in common, and it’s not what we usually think.
Real momentum …
- Doesn’t happen in a single moment.
- It doesn’t come from fear, threats, or crisis.
- It doesn’t depend on money, financial incentives, or new investments.
- It doesn’t rely on a revolutionary new program or technology.
- In fact, it doesn’t rely on a revolution at all.
Real momentum comes from a commitment.
It comes from a dedicated group of core leaders who are willing to look beyond the way things have always been done, who are hungry to borrow and draw inspiration from others, and who are committed to creating a culture of ongoing learning, innovation, and excellence.
That’s it.
Adopting this mindset, slowly at first, but faster and more significantly over time, fuels unstoppable alignment, focus, and acceleration.
That is fundamentally what this newsletter is all about. It is an invitation to Civic Leaders and Homelessness Change Makers who know we can do a better job of addressing homelessness in this country.
And the fastest path to change is not hoping for some big future blank check, a more favorable political or economic environment, or whatever other default excuse we rely on for needing external conditions to improve.
Our systems change when WE CHANGE.
In Marin:
- We admitted we were stuck and genuinely sought out help and guidance
- We went on the road to learn from neighbors and other communities
- We hosted national experts and challenged our status quo thinking
- We joined national learning coalitions
- We changed our data processes
- We refined our strategy to prioritize both our values and public concerns
- We implemented stronger project management practices
- We mapped our system for the first time, revealing glaring inefficiencies
- We adopted quarterly innovation cycles to experiment and drive improvement
- We got scrappy, figuring out ways to repurpose existing resources
- We created a new public-private backbone organization
- We implemented programs to the fidelity of their original research
- People who had been homeless for 20, 30, even 40 years, were finally housed
- Our long-term permanent supportive housing retention rate rose to 95%
- We didn't wait to build new housing - we focused on scattered-site placements
- We started a landlord recruitment initiative that was named a Best Practice by HUD
- We stopped competing and started submitting collaborative applications
- We met constantly, and that motley group of colleagues became true friends
After all these years, I still get teary watching this video from that time, because I know, even when the cards are completely stacked against us (as they are now), it's possible to end homelessness.
Please Help Spread the Word
If there are practitioners, leaders, and Change Makers who you think should be connected with this movement, I would be deeply grateful if you would consider sharing this article and encouraging them to subscribe to our newsletter.
Thank you so much for your partnership!
- Andrew