Redesign Detroit’s homelessness crisis response by abolishing the need for congregate shelters and offering alternative forms of crisis housing with strong navigation services and by focusing on improvements to coordinated entry that can assist people to more quickly to permanent housing options.
In interviews and in conversation with community members who have navigated CAM and have experienced shelter programs in Detroit (and in some cases, now assist others in navigating those same services), experiences and insights were shared that illustrated a large gap between individuals’ ability to move from congregate shelter into permanent housing.
In addition to the baseline ineffectiveness of congregate shelters in supporting people in accessing stable, permanent housing, the COVID-19 crisis has illustrated that many shelters are underfunded and lacking staff and supplies, making it harder to maintain safe and sanitary conditions (1).
Many congregate shelters have harmful and restrictive policies rooted in racism, homophobia, and transphobia that make them an unsafe, an option of last resort, or completely keep many Black, Brown, Indigenous, TGNC and LGBQ people out of services.(2) Examples of harmful and restrictive policies include those that restrict safe entry or retention of shelter due to drug or alcohol use, immigration status, and/or gender identity.
People who have navigated Detroit’s homeless service programs repeatedly shared that both access to shelter and treatment within shelter were difficult and, at times, traumatizing. People experiencing homelessness and housing instability need access to crisis housing of their choice that offers privacy, dignity, and safety, and leads to long-term housing.
There are also gaps in the continuity of care between CAM, the coordinated entry system, and the shelter programs. People accessing shelter are often not fully aware of the CAM process, how to navigate through CAM while in shelter, or how remain connected to CAM if they leave shelter without permanent housing or choose not to enter a shelter program at all.
A strong coordinated entry system must ensure that staff in all crisis housing settings are fully trained in the coordinated entry process and that people utilizing crisis housing and experiencing unsheltered homelessness have navigation services that keep them informed and connected to the process and additional services.
The following common themes emerged related to the state of Detroit’s response to housing crises:
- Lack of effective access and use of CAM (coordinated entry) including:
- Lack of navigation assistance within the shelter system
- Lack of understanding of the assessment and prioritization process to access housing and concerns of inequitable prioritization
- Lack of navigation services across the crisis housing, experiences of unsheltered homelessness, and coordinated entry process
- Lack of access for the Transgender and gender non-conforming (TGNC) community due to low TGNC cultural competency, distrust, and lack of connection to organizations that serve the TGNC community
- Lack of effective service connections and case management
- Lack of pipeline to permanent housing
- Service navigation is opaque with not much effective assistance
- Physical, emotional, and mental safety concerns relating to quality of services and treatment from staff, cleanliness, privacy
Utilize COVID relief and stimulus funding to design a crisis response that abolishes the need for large congregate shelters by creating safe, service-enriched crisis housing options.
The Framework for an Equitable COVID-19 Homelessness Response encourages communities to prioritize activities focused on the establishing non-congregate emergency shelter for purposes of social distancing, isolation, and quarantine and efforts to keep people safer within decompressed congregate shelter settings.
Communities are called upon to sustain and expand sheltering opportunities during the pandemic and to strive to transform their sheltering system to focus on non-congregate environments and other, safer models of sheltering people, in order to be better prepared for future public health crises and to create more welcoming and efficient systems.
Detroit should utilize the framework as a tool in the robust and ongoing community-led process necessary to properly utilize a portion of the subsequent rounds of federal and state relief and recovery funds to re-design the crisis response in Detroit. The community process should include HRD, the CoC, providers, and people with lived experience to set funding priorities and clear goals around de-congregating shelters and creating alternate forms of crisis housing and assistance. It will be essential to support the leadership capacity of people who have navigated Detroit’s shelters in the process, to continually communicate with people currently utilizing shelters and others crisis assistance about what is working and not working within the crisis response, and to adapt to evidence-based practices. It will be important to create opportunities not just for feedback from people with lived experience, but opportunities for them to lead implementation toward their visions for a future with no congregate shelters.
One of the things we constantly hear is how difficult it is to navigate services for homeless or displaced folks in Detroit. That it’s been difficult for folks to feel safe in shelter and how difficult it is to actually be able to hold down a job and still be in shelter.
Community advocate
Emergency shelter tends to be a tremendous barrier in navigating the system we need to have a willingness to be more flexible in how we’re providing emergency shelter
Provider
Strategy in Action
At Y2Y in Boston, the nation’s first youth-led youth homeless shelter, participants in the program collaborate with service providers, other youth experiencing homelessness, and student volunteers to create sustainable pathways out of homelessness and develop skills for long-term success. Young people informed and led every aspect of the program, from what services they offer to the design of the space.(3)
Launch a community-driven process to design improvements to CAM and further racial equity.
Communities across the country have raised concerns around coordinated entry’s role in perpetuating racial disparities within the homeless response system. CoCs and other community stakeholders from many parts of the country have reported anecdotal evidence that CES assessments lead to a prioritization of white people for housing resources over Black, Brown, and Indigenous people.(4) It is clear that the coordinated entry system is perpetuating racial inequities in the homelessness responses across the country and a further evaluation of CAM is needed to understand the ways in which it may be contributing to disparities in Detroit. Although the most documented example of this is in the use of the coordinated entry assessment tools,(5) the entire process of CAM should be evaluated to identify places that are perpetuating racism or having other harmful effects on people attempting to access the system.(6)
The community-driven process should include(7):
- A broad community stakeholder group, including those most impacted by CAM
- A set of clear goals and objectives around improving CAM for Black, Brown, Indigenous, and LGBTQ community members
- An evaluation of all components of CAM (access, assessment, prioritization, and referral) for places for implicit or explicit racial bias is showing
A pairing of CAM data with continuous actions for improvement
Number one is that I’m not getting housed fast enough, we hear that very frequently. They feel the process isn’t working for them. Coupled with that, ‘I don’t know where I am in the process or what my next step is’
Provider
Strategy in Action
The Advancing Racial Equity through Assessments and Prioritization guide developed by Department of Housing and Urban Development Technical Assistant providers offers a comprehensive look at ways to organize community stakeholders around a planning and evaluation process to re-design coordinated entry systems to move toward racial equity. It offers suggestions on tools and data to use for the race-based evaluations of coordinated entry and ways to move towards action, including ways to look at prioritization factors that disproportionately effect marginalized communities as a means to ensure they have better access to the system.
Youth Collaboratory, in partnership with service providers, HUD, HHS, USICH and Melville Charitable Trust, created the Coordinated Entry Learning Collaborative (CELC) in response to the youth service field’s need for guidance on how to design, implement, and maintain a coordinated community response to youth homelessness. Through the CELC, early innovators “case” challenges and find support from their peers. This includes sharing previous strategies that have failed, current or potential strategies, tangible policies and procedures, tools for implementation, and tools for system-level analysis.
Fully fund a peer navigation program for all populations that supports individuals from point of access into permanent housing.
Peer navigators are service providers who have personally navigated a housing program or system and are paid for their work supporting and connecting with individuals who are themselves navigating homeless services. Peer navigators can be an incredibly impactful form of support.
The unique power of peer navigation programs is in part in the shared lived experience of homelessness and/or housing instability, but this can often translate to other shared experiences as well. Through these peer-to-peer relationships, trust can be built that helps to reduce barriers to housing, connect people to service providers and assist with referrals to programs and services—all with the end goal of creating a pathway out of homelessness. While housing navigation assistance programs in Detroit do exist, there is a unique value in peer navigation programs. Peer navigators can leverage their experience and training to provide what is often much-needed relief from the burden of individuals having to navigate opaque systems on their own. Not only can peer housing navigators connect clients with services and provide problem solving support, but they can also provide social and emotional support to help an individual to live independently.
Strategy in Action
The Peer Wellness Program, a service component of Pathways to Housing, New York (PTH-NY), provides a wide range of peer-delivered services. These services include a peer-led recovery center and service delivery model that embeds peer specialists with clinical teams; a collaborative, strengths-based peer coaching model; and a peer-involved research component that supports peers interested in delivering presentations at local and national conferences. The project offers participants assistance with an array of services, such as housing retention, employment, pursuing their education, securing entitlements, making social connections, criminal justice issues, reuniting with children and families, living healthier lifestyles, becoming financially informed, and dealing with trauma. The Peer Warm Line, where peers are able to provide extra support via telephone in the evening and on weekends, has been ongoing since the beginning of the program.(7)
A Place 4 Me is an initiative that coordinates the planning and implementation of local efforts to improve outcomes for transition age youth. They found that many of their clients were leaving shelters without information about where they were going next. After digging deeper into the data, A Place 4 Me secured grant funds to hire two peer navigators to provide peer-to-peer outreach and resource support to these youths. The young people currently in those roles have experience with both foster care and homelessness, and their efforts to connect with other young people in similar circumstances have proved helpful.