Refocus, coordinate, and target homelessness prevention resources to and for those most likely to become homeless and to those who have previously experienced homelessness.
Detroit is ranked with the second highest rate of poverty among large cities in the United States as a result of its history of housing crises, depopulation, and divestment. In 2020, 30.6% of Detroit residents were living below the poverty line.(1) The COVID-19 pandemic has only exacerbated poverty and housing instability for Detroiters and increased demand for homelessness prevention services.
The work of Barbara Poppe and Dr. Dennis Culhane together offer a framework for evaluating Detroit’s current homelessness prevention efforts: primary, secondary, and tertiary prevention efforts should be demonstrably effective and efficient.(2) Research shows that, unless homelessness prevention services are community-wide and part of a larger structure of planning and organization that address proper targeting of support, they are unlikely to be efficient.(3)
Like many cities, Detroit’s priorities for homelessness prevention funding are not efficient and cannot be shown to be effective for the task at hand.(4) Primary prevention efforts are folded into broader local poverty alleviation efforts and are dispersed across different programs and agencies, making them difficult for people nearing or in crisis to access. Secondary intervention resources that are intended to solve the immediate crisis of lost housing, such as diversion, emergency cash assistance, and landlord mediation, are limited in Detroit and their efficacy has not been measured.
There is also a lack of meaningful connections between these secondary interventions and those who have recently left housing supported by homeless response programs in Detroit. This lack of connection leaves individuals at a higher risk of experiencing homelessness again after exiting a program and with little access to an intervention beyond going back through CAM and the homeless response once they have lost their housing for a second time.
Efficiency will require that households most likely to become imminently homeless without assistance are targeted for services and support, including those that have recently left housing supported by homeless response programs. Effectiveness requires that assistance is actually preventing and mitigating homelessness for the individuals and families at risk. The cyclical nature of severe housing instability and homelessness in Detroit indicates that prevention efforts are not effective.
Poppe’s research found that programs designed to prevent homelessness only show net cost savings to communities only when those at imminent risk of homelessness are successfully house and the cost of providing emergency shelter is significant,(5) which is now the case across the United States given the necessity and cost of non-congregate shelter.
The following themes arose in conversations with administrators, service providers, and people who have experienced homelessness in Detroit:
- There are a series of “stops” individuals and families have to make to access the multiple services they to prevent homelessness;
- Instances of homelessness are often intermittent and cyclical, intertwined with periods of unstable housing arrangements;
- Housing quality and preservation is prioritized over affordability in mainstream local politics;
- Eviction prevention is prioritized for homelessness prevention funding locally; and
- Diversion is effective for families, but funding is insufficient and it little to no diversion is going to other populations.
Launch a process to identify who is most likely to become homeless in Detroit to then define systems- and service-level needs.
Members of the community who have or are currently experiencing homelessness should be the key informants in a process to assess the community’s prevention resources, identifying those that are most effective at ending or mitigating the effects of Detroiters’ housing crises. While this work has been started in the past, it should be re-launched in the context of system transformation efforts.
This effort should be informed by quantitative and qualitative data about who becomes homeless in Detroit and how those experiences unfold at the individual, family, and community levels in order to increase the efficiency and targeting of those programs. Funding and resources for the identified programs and targeted demographics should be shifted from inefficient primary prevention efforts, as identified by the community.
Not investing money in preventative services to keep people in their homes, it is creating more homelessness. Same things with not addressing foreclosure issues like high tax rates and water bills.
Systems leader
Strategy in Action
The Lived Experience Advisory Committee of the Baltimore City Continuum of Care, which started as a working group and became a standing committee of the CoC, offers an excellent model for community-led policy advising and change.
The committee meets weekly and is responsible for advising the CoC and the Mayor’s Office of Homeless Services. One of the committee’s current goals is to reform the homeless service system by engaging and educating the Mayor’s Office of Homeless Services and provider agencies to improve the delivery of services in shelters and other parts of the system. Members of the committee sit on almost every other CoC committee, the committee’s co-chairs are members of the CoC Executive Committee, which also has six CoC Board positions dedicated to people who have experienced homelessness.
Streamline primary prevention resources through coordinated, city-wide services and supports
As outlined below in Action 6, Detroit’s homeless response system needs stronger connections to other systems, social services, and supports. The community’s poverty alleviation efforts are far-reaching but difficult to access given their decentralization. For people experiencing homelessness, this is particularly challenging and effectively cuts this segment of the population off from resources that are available to others in the community. Strategy 3 of Action 6 offers a framework for connecting people experiencing homelessness to these resources more effectively.
Strategy in Action
The Everyone Home program in Washington, DC is a 90-day program offering services for families at risk of experiencing homelessness based at the Virginia Williams Family Resource Center, which serves as the community’s front door for services for families experiencing homelessness in the city. The Everyone Home program offers flexible financial assistance, mediation, and connections to other supportive services including resources from and connections to Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), child welfare, schools, health care, and employment services.(6)
Create tertiary homelessness prevention programs based on community-defined needs.
Tertiary prevention is “designed to mitigate the effects of housing instability once homelessness occurs and to create opportunities for stable housing.” Due to the cyclical nature of homelessness for many Detroiters, a tertiary prevention strategy and targeted resources will ensure that people who are experiencing homelessness in Detroit are able to access housing stability without having to come back through homeless response programs. This strategy should be focused on those who have recently exited Rapid Rehousing programs and are at risk of re-entering homeless response programs, those that are in Permanent Supportive Housing and could be safely moved to non-supported housing, and those on or who have recently left voucher assistance programs. This strategy should be closely aligned with efforts to improve service quality within the homeless service programs to ensure quality of intervention across prevention programs as well.
Strategy in Action
Local comprehensive tertiary prevention should include tenants’ rights policy improvement and enforcement, comprehensive access to eviction prevention resources and emergency rental assistance, and streamlined, systematic connections to other local, state, and federal public assistance as needed. These additional resources should be coordinated across systems and access should be simplified and streamlined between these systems and homeless service access points. Needs should be defined by members of the community who have repeated experiences of homelessness. Streamlined connections to the following resources should be considered: housing vouchers; behavioral health care; transportation assistance; senior services; veteran services; transportation assistance; Supplemental Security Income (SSI) and Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI); TANF; Head Start and Early Head Start programs; Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Programs (SNAP) and other federal food assistance programs, employment services and job training; Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) benefits and services; and services for survivors of domestic violence.
Systematize connections between systems to ensure that individuals exiting or interacting with those systems have access to the housing supports they need.
Public systems often disrupt people’s lives and subsequently fail to support the needs they’ve created through that disruption. Young people aging out of the child welfare system and individuals exiting prison or jail often have no housing support during these pivotal transition points in their life. Systematizing cross-system connections for these individuals calls for housing status assessments that lead to warm handoffs between systems and strong case management as individuals’ needs are identified. Data sharing and co-location are additional strategies to strengthen such connections. Regardless of the point of identification or handoff, individuals’ rights to dignity and self-determination must be honored.
Strategy in Action
Audrey Premdas, a registered nurse in clinical information technology at Arrowhead Regional Medical Center in California, outlined the policies and tools that have helped her and her team improve discharge planning for patients at risk of homelessness upon discharge. Law enforcement, child welfare, criminal justice, and juvenile justice system administrators should adapt public health approaches to discharge planning that recognize housing as a social determinant of health and therefore a critical component of case management.