Reaching Zero

"Systems are designed to get the results you get and If you don't like the system you need to go back and change it. It is our responsibility as drivers of the system to set up something better".   Erin Healy, Community Solutions

So, everything I have heard along the way on this journey points to collaboration as a key to addressing homelessness, but I constantly wonder whether it is easier said than done. The reality being that many organisations (including Councils) have their own drivers, different skill sets and competing funding sources.

 

The Community Solutions model for ending homelessness is based on collaboration and sharing, so it was great to have a chat with  Erin Healy and KO Campbell about just that when I was in New York.

Above (L-R): Thank you to the lovely Erin Healy and KO Campbell for an excellent afternoon and discussion

 

Built for Zero rides on a few straight forward principles:

1. Create an accountable team. No single actor is fully accountable for ending homelessness - all key players work together
2. Set a shared aim. Have a unified aim and make a commitment to a measurable end state
3. Use real-time, by-name data. Commit to collecting quality, real time, person-specific data
4. Make targeted investments. Based on data, secure the right housing resources for your community

 

Below are my notes from our conversation and some resources….

 

What are  some of the barriers?

 

Housing - Housing  is too often seen as a vehicle for wealth - and as long as it will be a mechanism for making money we will see increasing numbers of people experiencing homelessness.

 

Funding - Some cities are doing great work and are very innovative but funding systems don't help that.  The same projects, year after year. No one innovates. The easiest thing to do is the same thing.

 

Accountability - In the US, homelessness is not thought of as an issue. Government disperses seeds of funding. No lines of accountability and no central strategy.

 

Sharing data - There may be privacy concerns about data, but would you rather people die? We need to get around them by considering homelessness what it is - a public health emergency. 

What can we do?

 

Collaborate

• The biggest mindset shift in Built for Zero is getting multiple agencies working as a team. That allows us to track performance at a system level. They will all have agency level data.
• You need to share your data to see if everything - that you are all doing- is reducing homelessness.
• If you have the data you can align money to those who do things well, instead of everyone doing the same thing and doubling up.
• You can show advantages to thinking system-wide rather than thinking individually.
• We had organisations who really did not like each other at the start, who would do sprints together and at the end be best friends. All the disagreement goes away. They are on the same team
• You can also create a centre of gravity to get funding. This approach attracts a different kind of funder

 

Know what you are working on (aka - define it)

• Nothing moves a team along more than committing to a shared measurable time valued goal.
• The first thing we try to get teams to do is to commit to our definitions of homelessness - functional zero.
• Definitions  are really important. It’s the foundation for getting people to be on a team together. Something that they are all jointly committed to and doing
• Data becomes important. Have a baseline. Suddenly you have people who say I know what we are doing. I know who my partner is.

 

A few resources

• Community Solutions website: https://community.solutions/
• Built for Zero explainer (and other great videos on their YouTube channel). This is an easy way to understand the concept - https://www.youtube.com/user/CmtySolutions)
• An EXCELLENT edition of the Revisionist History podcast by Malcom Gladwell - A memorial for the Living - find it linked off here - https://community.solutions/remembering-the-lives-lost/