One of the biggest problems with the way we have 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 rebrand or use inconsistent terminology for different programmatic interventions, thus making it even harder for both policymakers AND people experiencing homelessness to understand how the system works.
STEPS is intended to be the antidote to this jumbled web. It is a consistent way for ALL communities to visualize how the parts of a homeless system of care fit together.
STEPS
Fundamentally, there are a limited number of basic building blocks that go into a homeless system of care. They include:
- Societal Issues - 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, systemic racism, access to behavioral health services)
- Prevention - Trying to stop homelessness before it happens (typically involves legal, financial, and / or short-term case management assistance)
- 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 in unsheltered settings
- 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, etc.)
- 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 with lower levels of acuity who have a path back to self-sufficiency (often this is rapid rehousing programs)
- Long-Term Assistance - Ongoing subsidized housing that includes wraparound support services (this is generally permanent supportive housing, the data driven solution to chronic homelessness)
- Finding Units - The actual process of identifying housing units, whether through landlord recruitment, building new housing, master-leasing, or shared housing
"STEP" is intended to show how these programmatic building blocks tend to fit together. Importantly, all of these 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, change makers, and actual processes that actually help to foster system-level coordination, efficiency, and effectiveness
- Funding - Ensuring systems are sufficiently resourced and tied to financial benchmarks
- Workforce - Supporting the actual people doing the work, from frontline staff to executive leadership
- Equity - Making sure the system is producing equitable outcomes for everyone in it
- Customers - Ensuring system design includes feedback from the people who are utilizing it
- Data - Establishing the right metrics and outcomes to measure progress and accountability
- Story - Engaging with the broader community to support the system
- Advocacy - Coming together to effectively advocate for broader policy and systems change to prevent homelessness in the first place
This simple framework has helped communities:
- Structure, evaluate, and implement strategic plans
- Clarify who does what and who funds what in a given system
- Clarify organizational strengths and programmatic focus areas
- Establish performance and financial benchmarks
- Identify and implement national best practices
- Provide a tool for community engagement and system feedback
- Quantify current and needed financial investment
- Serve as a tool for onboarding and preserving institutional knowledge
All of these different use cases have been fueled by one simple, underlying strategic insight.
If the building blocks for a homeless system 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).
The key, therefore, is sparking an ongoing process of establishing benchmarks, incorporating the practices that set those benchmarks, and then continuing to innovate from those new standards.
The fastest way to spark, sustain, and accelerate this type of momentum is to simply ask yourself the following, again and again and again:
- #1 - Do we have the best version of each component (or group of components) in our homeless system of care?
- #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?
That's it. Adopting this mindset, slowly at first, but faster and more significantly over time, fuels unstoppable alignment, focus, and improvement.
STEPS is like a compass. If we recognize that there are optimal approaches to each intervention, we can overcome our hyper-localized responses to homelessness and quickly implement national best practices.
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