Getting to the Other Side - A New Strategy for the Homeless Service Sector

"A strategy is a comprehensive plan designed to achieve a specific goal or set of goals. It involves identifying objectives, determining actions to achieve those objectives, and allocating resources effectively. A strategy essentially outlines how an individual or organization will reach their goal."

I sometimes like to analogize choosing a strategy to deciding how to cross a river. Simply put: 

The Goal - Get to the other side 

The Strategy - The approach to doing that 

From this perspective, there are a lot of different options:

• Build a boat
• Build a bridge
• Join arms and try to ford 
• Go upstream and find a shallower place to cross

Strategy is choosing one of these paths and committing to it. 

Easy in Theory but Challenging in Practice

Good strategy involves:

1. A deep understanding of context. It is rooted in a profound, almost intuitive understanding of current conditions - strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (the classic SWOT analysis). Hust as importantly though, it is also grounded in what is NOT going to change in coming years. Without a focus on the long-term, strategy is reduced to flashy initiatives and short-term programs. 

2. An inspiring and enduring commitment. It is clear and motivating and does not fall apart at the first roadblock. This is particularly important because the world is a complex place, and unforeseen issues and challenges will arrive. The same is true of new opportunities, which might appear attractive and enticing,  but can also take one off their original path. 

3. Consequences. By committing to a certain course of action, a strategy is just as much about what a team is NOT going to do as it is about what they are. Where are time, energy, and resources focused? What opportunities warrant exploration and which are simply distractions? 

To stay with our outdoor theme, a good strategy is like a compass. It orients action towards a long-term goal. There will no doubt be obstacles along the way but with enough tenacity, grit, and compounding long-term action, any future is possible.

The "No Strategy" Strategy

For the last 45+ years, the homeless service sector has been operating with a "no strategy" strategy. 

Since the dawn of modern homelessness in the early 1980s, for all intents and purposes, we - the homeless service sector - have structurally decentralized the response to this crisis, leaving states, counties, CoCs, cities, and individual services providers to their own devices to figure out what to do.

This our current paradigm. And it isn't working.

I'll give a very specific example. 

One might argue that "Housing First" is / was our strategy, but Housing First perfectly illustrates my point.

Housing First emerged in the 1990s as a specific programmatic intervention for helping people experiencing chronic homelessness enter and sustain permanent supportive housing. It worked because there was a specific set of evidenced-based practices that ensured people had sufficient support and assistance to maintain and ultimately thrive in these placements. 

As word about this approach gradually and organically spread, by the late 2010s, having grown without any real top-down accountability or fidelity to the original model (i.e., there is no national structure or strategy to ensure fidelity to the original model), "Housing First" morphed into more of a philosophy of harm reduction. 

We can try to vilify external stakeholders who cast aversions on Housing First, but the truth is, we - the homeless service sector, because of our structural fragmentation, let it expand without guardrails, we under-invested in the programmatic elements that made it a success in the first place, and then communities started to claim it was a failure and doesn't work. 

(By the way, this is a little bit like building a table from IKEA, not following the directions, and then complaining that IKEA sucks because you now have a wobbly table and a pile of unused parts ...)

But here's the thing about empowerment.

If it was just a matter of getting attacked from the outside, that's one thing. There is very little that can be done about that.

If, however, we are honest and clear about the things we do control and influence - well, it is very quickly evident that there is a lot of thing we can in fact change and improve.

Taking a Really Big Swing

At the risk of taking a really big swing and missing, I would humbly offer the following for consideration:

Between now and 2030, can we come together and build a shared understanding of homeless systems of care that sparks accountability and inspired competition among peers within the 120 largest urban and suburban CoCs?

There is so much more to say (and edit and revise and improve on). And my sincere hope is that the document linked below becomes that forum. It is an open-source space for Change Makers to come together and begin to reverse the structural fragmentation that has been plaguing our response to homelessness for the last 45+ years. 

So, do you want to help?

Are you one of those Change Makers?