Evidence Matters, Part 6: From Evidence to Action

Episode Topic: From Evidence to Action

Explore how evidence-based solutions are turning the tide on homelessness. This hopeful conversation with researchers, government leaders, and community partners reveals how collaborative prevention models, proven successful in Santa Clara County, are being scaled nationwide to create lasting change. Learn how data and partnership make homelessness solvable.

Featured Speakers:

• David Phillips, University of Notre Dame
• Chad Bojorquez, Chief Program Officer, Destination: Home
• Alyson Moon, Director of Community Impact, Mary’s Place 

Read this episode's recap over on the University of Notre Dame's open online learning community platform, ThinkND: https://go.nd.edu/994b84.

This podcast is a part of the ThinkND Series titled Evidence Matters. 

Thanks for listening! The ThinkND Podcast is brought to you by ThinkND, the University of Notre Dame's online learning community. We connect you with videos, podcasts, articles, courses, and other resources to inspire minds and spark conversations on topics that matter to you — everything from faith and politics, to science, technology, and your career.

• Learn more about ThinkND and register for upcoming live events at think.nd.edu.
• Join our LinkedIn community for updates, episode clips, and more.

Transcript

Welcome and Introduction

Speaker 10 0:06

Welcome everybody. It's great to have you in this community as part of this conversation. We appreciate the work that you do and joining us here, on behalf of King County and the Wilson Sheehan Lab for economic opportunities at Notre Dame, otherwise known as Leo and j PAL North America. I wanna welcome you all here to our evidence matter series. it's great to have so many friends and colleagues here from all around the country. we are recording this webinar and we plan to air it at a later date on King County Television, just the speakers. So don't be afraid to turn on your video. we won't air your face all around King County. I wanna, introduce myself. I'm Kerry Seahawk. I'm King County's Evidence and Impact Officer. And I'm very passionate about advancing racial equity, through bringing together the expertise of our staff at King County, our research partners who are here with us and our community partners like Allison, who's here with us today. and evidence matters. This webinar series is a partnership between King County, Leo and j Powell, and we're all organizations who are working in really complimentary ways to fight poverty and to increase access to economic opportunity. So I'm going to, um, you know, turn it over to Vincent to introduce himself and then we'll, we'll get started.

Speaker 2 1:41

All right. Thank you very much, Gary. So for those of you who don't know me, I am Vincent Kwan and I am the co-executive director of JAL North America at MIT. And so JAL stands for the Poverty Action Lab, and we are a research and policy center that focuses on a simple, yet ambitious mission, which is to reduce poverty through the use of rigorous scientific research to find out what policies and programs ultimately move the needle in improving the lives of people experiencing poverty. And so we aim to do this by identifying effective solutions and then ensuring that the evidence in fact, reaches policy makers and social sector leaders who can act upon that high quality evidence to ultimately improve lives. We also work to strengthen the ability of researchers in approaching research and also policy makers in working on research partnerships. And so we partnered with Carrie and the folks at Leo to the study, the effectiveness of different programs in areas as wide ranging as transportation to homelessness prevention. And we're really excited for this conversation today. So back over to you, Carrie.

Speaker 10 2:45

Yeah. Yeah, it's really great. Um, this example is such a great example of how we've all worked together in this space and how we can learn from each other across jurisdictions too. we don't have to continually be reinventing the wheel. Um, we learn so much from our partners, like all of you who are joining from around the, around the country. So we've got a great, group of people to chat with you today about the work that they've been doing. So I'm gonna ask them to just briefly, introduce themselves. I'll turn it over. First to Chad. You wanna say Hi Chad?

Speaker 3 3:19

Hi everyone. Thanks for being here. I'm Chad Hor. I'm the Chief Program officer of Destination Home. We're a public private partnership, focused on preventing and ending homelessness in Santa Clara County.

Speaker 10 3:30

Great. And sa Chad, tell us where Santa Clara County is.

Speaker 3 3:34

Yeah, thanks. I was just like, wait, uh, Santa Clara County is like Silicon Valley, California, so, uh, Northern California Bay Area.

Speaker 10 3:41

Yeah. Great. Beautiful, beautiful place. Uh, and Jessica, you wanna introduce yourself?

Speaker 4 3:47

Yes, thank you. Good afternoon everyone. Jessica Roco, program manager of the Homelessness Prevention System here in the county of Santa Clara as well. And happy to be here.

Speaker 10 3:57

Yeah, great to have a fellow county official on board with me. And then we have Allison. Allison, you wanna say hi?

Speaker 5 4:06

Sure. Thanks Carrie. Uh, hey everyone, my name is Allison. I am the Director of Community Impact at Mary's Place here in King County, and we are really working to, um, address and in homelessness here for families with children.

Speaker 10 4:21

Yeah. We're so proud to have you here and have you part of our community. Allison, thank you for the work that you do. And last but certainly not least, my colleague David Phillips. Hi David.

Speaker 6 4:35

Hello. Uh, yeah. My name's David Phillips. I'm a research professor at the Wilson Chim Knight for Economic Opportunities or Leo at Notre Dame. And so I've worked with many of the folks, uh, on the call today on different research studies in Santa Clara County, in King County. And what we do at LEO is we work together with social service providers around the country to try to pull together the worlds of social service provision, and scientific evaluation. Try to learn about what's making a big difference in the lives of people facing poverty and, and do more of those things. So, so glad to be here with, with some old friends, to talk about some of the work we've done together.

Speaker 10 5:06

Yeah, so we've got all kind of three legs of the stool here, research partners, community partners, government staff, all the kinds of expertise we really need to start moving solutions forward. So Vincent, I'm gonna turn it back to you to get us started in this conversation.

Speaker 2 5:23

Great. Really excited to have this esteemed group of panelists with us to talk about how do we actually bring evidence-based solutions to address this issue of homelessness that often can feel so intractable across many communities in the United States. And so David, to set the stage as a researcher who has spent a lot of his career focusing on homelessness, prevention, and various other solutions to this challenge, could you tell us a bit why about how it's so imperative for cities and counties to invest in what works and especially during this particular moment in time.

Speaker 6 5:57

Yeah, thanks Vincent. There's a couple of things about this particular moment that I think really underline why we wanna focus on what works in responding to homelessness. the sim, I mean, the simplest reason is that homelessness has been increasing. Maybe if we, I, I'm an economics professor and so the, a warning label that comes with economics professors is that we usually come with a couple graphs. So I've got a couple graphs, if we could go to the next slide. if we look at, information that this is what the federal government puts together through point time counts across the country and adds up for the whole country. If you look at the number of people experiencing homelessness on a night in January, over the past couple of decades, when I first got started in working in research related to homelessness was fairly optimistic in some ways because it was, it was like a lot of folks were homeless, but we were making progress in 2009, seven, 2009, 2011, right. Homelessness was going down, down. We were making progress and I think over the past decade, right? One of the things that's made this question even more urgent is that homelessness has gone up around the country. That some of the urgency that you see in the news and that sort of thing is reflected in the data. More people. In this type of crisis situation. Uh, and so then the reaction to that situation, I think has been a lot of, of pushback against the current paradigm of how we respond to homelessness. Right. So many people on the call are probably familiar, right? With the recent executive order, focusing on, moving away from programs that focus primarily on providing housing supports and toward ones that mandate, uh, mental health or substance use treatment, of the idea of using force to remove, uh, encampments that we see, you know, live action in real time in, in DC right now and elsewhere, of course. right. There's a lot of pushback against it. I think a lot of the, the behind a lot of that pushback is this, like, underlying assumption that what we're doing is not working. I think there's, and if I could introduce like one piece of terminology, uh, there's an assumption that the counterfactual that, uh, what, what would've happened if we did something different, would've been better. What we've actually seen. And so, right, what you see on the graph here is, right, this is the actual, this is what's we've actually seen in the world. if we can go to the next slide. I think what the, sort of, the assumption this is not real data, this is just sort of me, I think putting on the graph what people have in their mind when, when this pushback is happening, is this idea that, well, the counterfactual, what would've happened? What if, if we had done something different that things would've looked better, that we would've had lower homelessness rates, like the, the gold dash line there. now that's one possible explanation of where we are in the world. a, a different possible explanation that I think others have in the back of their mind, right? Is that, well, maybe we're facing a lot of headwinds. Maybe what's going on is that there's a lot of stuff going on in the world. Rent has been rising faster than wages in a lot of different places. Our production of affordable housing has been slow and housing supply in general is constrained in a lot of places. There was a big pandemic that happened in 2020 that affected people's lives in, in big ways. And so if maybe we can go to the next slide. I think a lot of people have in the back of their mind a different counterfactual, which is like, while we're facing these huge headwinds, homelessness was actually gonna go up and up and up, and it was gonna go up even more than what we've seen. And we've managed to fight against that wind a bit, and, and make some progress against it. But even despite the progress we've made, homelessness has gone up some, but not as much as it would've if we hadn't done what we did. And those are two very different views of the world, right? One that's, that's, both say like, yeah, homelessness has gone up. One says what we're doing is working, but we need to do more of it. And, and another says, what we're doing is not working. And so how do we distinguish between those two things I think is really, really important. So, so Vincent, to your question, like, I think talking about what works is, is so fundamental right now because we have to sort out, what is effective. And so I think today what I'm excited to talk about, like I, there are ways that we can do that, right? Because that's a, that's a debate about facts, right? There are other things that are diff more difficult to resolve. That's a, that's a debate about facts. And I think we can resolve that by looking at facts and learning from people's experie. To give just one example where I think we've done this well in the past, is with permanent supportive housing. So when people talk about housing first or permanent supportive housing, what do I mean when I say that? I'm talking about programs that prioritize providing, long-term housing supports to folks. So think like maybe a voucher that I could use to, to rent a place, um, over a long period of time and don't condition that housing support on other things like participating in, in substance use treatment or something like that. that was a pretty new idea two, three decades ago. And it's something that it turns out, we actually have tested, we've actually done things to try to understand what that counterfactual looks like, the what if for those, right?'cause we have a nice tool that we borrow from the folks over in, in, in the medical world, a randomized controlled trial, right? What do we do when we try to understand, whether a particular medicine is useful? Well, we've run a trial, right? Some people get the new experimental drugs, some people get a placebo. And we see the difference between those two. We understand the counterfactual, the what if, what would've happened to these folks. by having that comparison group, that alternative group, to see what would've happened, and then we can compare the two and actually see impact. And so it turns out that we've done this a lot actually with, housing first permanent supportive housing types, interv of interventions. There've been several randomized controlled trials over the years, testing them. One that I'll, I'll focus on, so there's a program called HUD vash, which is the Department of Housing and Urban Development Veterans Administration Supportive Housing Program. Back in the nineties, this idea of supportive housing was coming up with like, Hey, housing first, what if we just, we didn't have conditions on the program. What if we provided housing as, as the main focus of it? And they tested that against the status quo in a randomized control trial. Lo and behold, the people who were offered this new thing did better than people provided the status quo. and what's exciting to me is, one, they did that and there were several other randomized control trials around the time with similar results. It's a heavily tested intervention. We have lots of evidence that it works, but one of the most exciting things about it is that then it was expanded over time. The HUD VASH program. Expanded dramatically in, in the two thousands and, up toward today. and there's studies including some, uh, some of my colleagues here at LEO showing that communities that got more of this HUD VASH support, HUD VASH funding saw veteran homelessness fall by more than places that didn't get as much funding. And it's had such an effect that you can actually see it at the national level. So maybe the last, uh, slide I'll show here shows veteran homelessness, right? So we were just looking at graphs before where we saw, total homelessness in the United States, which has been going up and up and up over the past few years. If you look at veteran homelessness, that's the blue line on this picture here. It's actually been going down and by a lot, right? There are half as many veterans who are homeless experiencing homelessness now as a decade ago. That's an incredible success that we've seen in our country, and it's in large part because we've been expanding things that are effective and work for them. Um, and so that's what, when I come to this conversation, that's a lot of what I come with. I come with, wow. There are examples where we have tried out new ideas. We've learned from that. We've seen which ones were really worked well and which ones didn't, and the ones that worked really well, we did more of those things and we actually can make a difference, even at a national level, uh, as the example with veterans shows. And so I, I come into this conversation and you're questioning Vincent, of like, why do we need to know more about this today? It's like, because we actually can, we can learn about what makes a difference and we can do more of those things, both. And that helps both our communities and, and people who are experiencing homelessness. So, super excited about this conversation.

Santa Clara County's Homelessness Prevention System

Speaker 10 12:51

I love that David. I love how you, framed that up for us. And you know, I think when we sent this invitation out, we promised that this was going to be a bit of a hopeful conversation and I think you've brought that hope into the conversation. and regardless of what's happening at the federal level, there's a lot we can do at the local level, and that is happening around the country and we're learning from each other. as somebody who works, you know, in local government. I'm always looking out for what we can learn from other places. And so I was so excited that all of you at Leo and at JAL have partnered with Santa Clara County and that we're learning more about what they've been doing and how well that's been working there. And, I'm gonna tee up Chad here to talk about Santa Clara County's homelessness prevention system. It's super exciting what's happening. Not, and, you know, I think we're gonna learn in this webinar not only about that program, but you know, the intersection with, you know, the non, the nonprofit entities that have been working in this space and the county government and then the research partners who are really helping to demonstrate and help us learn about what's really working well. So Chad, tell us a little bit about what you've been up to. Yeah,

Speaker 3 14:12

thanks Carrie. and I think it is a story of hope. because, you know, I've been doing homeless services or, or prevention related services now for like two decades, um, in all different various forms. and I would say by far our Santa Clara County Homelessness Prevention system has been one of the most successful efforts because it's really rooted in, you know, building a new system solution. Um, it's, it's based on data and performance, like actual outcomes, like longstanding, like is this family still housed? that's like our focal point, right? It's like to wrap around each and every single family that we are able to serve in the homelessness prevention system and do whatever it takes to prevent them from becoming homeless. Um, and our outcomes have been really incredible and actually have, blown away like what our original goals that we thought were system bending at that time. so, you know, just kind of to, to. Bring everybody up to speed about what we've been up to in Santa Clara County. back in 2017, um, we as system partners and leaders all came together and said, you know, we've implemented housing first. Uh, we reoriented our entire supportive housing system around the most vulnerable people in our community. We're housing more people than ever, like thousands of people a year. Yet homelessness is on, is, you know, we're treading water or, uh, even on the rise, you know, by a few percentage points in our pit count, et cetera. And like, what are we not doing well? What we weren't doing is preventing homelessness from happening in the first place. And at that time there was a lot of, criticism around prevention efforts and, and scarcity, any funding, because people were like, well, how do you know it works? You give people money and you don't know if they became homeless later on. So what we set out to do was to build a systematic way of preventing people from becoming homeless. To really capture the data. Um, and we worked from the very beginning, uh, with University of Notre Dame lab for economic opportunities, David Phillips specifically, and other researchers. So we've been really fortunate to have like some of the same actual human beings involved in this project from the very beginning, uh, which is really awesome. and we wanted to prove like that if you, if you intervene at the point where a family is about to become homeless and you're flexible and you provide the assistance needed, that you can actually prevent homelessness from happening in the first place. we, the, when I talk about the system partners, I think it's really important to at least mention, you know. It was Destination Home. And we represent kind of a, a, a private side of a public private partnership that we have in our community. it was the county of Santa Clara. So Jessica Roco is here, she's gonna talk here in a moment. but she's also been there since the beginning. For example, um, it was our largest city, the city of San Jose and some of the smaller cities. it was our housing authority, uh, which is a really important system partner in our homeless system of care that wasn't always at the table, but in our, county, we have, the Housing Authority has over 20,000, uh, voucher holders of, obviously vulnerable, affordable housing, families, people living in affordable housing. and we all got together and it was decided that Destination Home would pilot a, whatever it takes approach to preventing homelessness. And we would essentially build a new safety net. So we raised private money from some of our, most trusted donors, but we, we raised kind of new levels of dollars from them and said, Hey. Take this chance with us. We're not gonna do a small pilot. We're not fixing a small hole in our system. We're actually gonna create a whole new system to prevent people from becoming homeless. And we got a little bit of, public funds as well. Um, and then we found we, we needed to find partners to actually do the work on the ground. And so we, we were able to, partner with, uh, organization called Sacred Heart Community Service. They were already aligned with seven nonprofit organizations that spanned geographically throughout our county. And were kind of, for example, the organizations that were doing the one-time assistances helping people with pg e, um, et cetera. And so they had kind of the presence and the, the trust of the community, but they weren't doing anything really, at, at the core of, at the intersection of homelessness. So, so we kind of brought them into the fold. And I think one of the original, major decisions that we made, I don't even know that we knew a lot of the decisions we've made. We, I don't think we knew at the time, like how essential they would be, but we asked. Uh, sacred Heart and the network of partners to be in our HMIS system, so in the Homeless Management Information System. So at that point, they become, they became part of our homeless continuum of care, and that is like part of the data, uh, the major source of the data that the University of Notre Dame was able to study, for example. and so, you know, from there we started out, uh, pretty humbly. We started out with like a two year pilot. We were gonna serve 200 families per year. and we had about a million and a half dollars collected, which was a lot of money at that time for our organization. and at that time it was, uh, one third government funds, one third public funds and two thirds private funds. So over the years, we worked super closely to create a system, that served each and every family individually. It was very flexible. Uh, we, we adapted the program. We continued to adapt the program on a regular basis, and we wanted to make sure that we were equitable across our community, regardless of, you know, geo geography, poverty level, et cetera, access to the system over time. And the, these trends continue. Um, but we saw this almost very early on. 90% of the households we serve are extremely low income. So 30% of the area median income, and below 90% of the households are, uh, people of color. So, head of households who are, either traditional races of color, but also Hispanic. Uh, we have a large Hispanic population in Santa Clara County. and we saw early trends that helped kind of change the system from the very beginning. For example, we were seeing that about 33% of the households right from the beginning were, victims of domestic violence, either actively or recent, within the last six months. And so we proactively reached out to our domestic violence advocacy consortium. These are the organizations in our community that, that we're already serving, uh, these households and said, come into the system. We're already seeing that this is a need, we need this expertise to be part of the system today. Kind of fast forwarding and I, and I, and I'm gonna transition soon because, one of our goals from the very beginning was that Destination home would kind of, you know, incubate this, get it off the ground, iterate it, make sure that it was equitable, make sure that it was accessible to people all across, our county and continue to build and bring in new partnerships and kind of. The coordination structure. Uh, sacred Heart is both a provider, but they're also what we call a network coordinator. So they coordinate all the different partners in our organization. They do data collection, compliance training, they support the partners. They're kind of the, the liaison between the funders and the nonprofit provider base, have played a really key role that we, in the beginning we knew that we needed someone to kind of be a lead agency, but over time they've become like a really critical component of the, of the organ of the network Today, this is kind of seven and a half years later. we have a, a system that's nearly$30 million per year. It serves 2,500 households minimum per year, all across the county. It involves 21 nonprofit organizations, and as of, uh, July 1st, 2024. We were finally successful. It got a little bit delayed, uh, first because, we were doing a good job and everybody's like, you should keep doing this and keep improving the system. Then COVID hit that was about a three year delay, uh, where this same network of organizations, you know, really was the backbone of our COVID response. And so July 1st, 2017, uh, the county of Santa Clara took it over as, as a primary intervention of our supportive housing system. And we feel like that was a huge success because the county's always gonna be around a lot longer than I am. Uh, and they're gonna have a lot more money than we ever will. And so, we feel very fortunate to have had this partnership and been able to get this system really from like an idea to a sustained part of our solution base in Santa Clara County.

Scaling and Sustaining the Effort

Speaker 2 22:06

Chad, that is a deeply, deeply inspiring story to hear from how you all set up this partnership to begin with, how many people have been involved, and ultimately how this has been an effort that's sustained by the county. And as a person who actually grew up in the Bay Area, I think this feels very top of mind, very hopeful to be able to have such an optimistic evidence-based story to be able to share. And Chad, I wanna underscore one of the things that you mentioned, which is the importance of being able to sustain this at the county level because destination home likely will not be there forever. But if we ultimately want to create change that last for a long period of time, that's piece of sustaining within the county is very, very key. So Jessica, I wanna hand it over to you now to hear a bit about how did you at the county level prepare for sustaining and scaling up this effort? What were some of the steps that you all had to take? And keeping in mind that a lot of the folks on this call today are actually folks that sit at different county offices as well.

Speaker 4 23:06

Thanks everyone. Thanks Chad. Um, like Chad mentioned, I've been, luckily I've been privileged enough to be a part of the system from the beginning and working with Chad, actually for, gosh, I wanna say over 15 years. 12 years. It's been a really long time. so it's been great to see everything grow and change. but yeah, there's a lot of things that had to kind of really be in place for this to be effective. A lot of it has to do with how things were structured, um, and how we were able to scale. So it definitely was an intentional system design that obviously took a lot of work, a lot of time. It wasn't just luck. I think we did get a lot of, we got lucky in a lot of ways, um, because of the willingness and a lot of the hard work with our partners. um. A lot of intentional design and hard work. So we made, you know, prevention. Um, we had a, we have a community plan to end homelessness and we made prevention, part of our, core pillar alongside, um, housing. We knew that long term, the plan was that we knew prevention was gonna be successful. It had to work. We knew prevention worked. Um, it was just a matter of time and we wanted it to be a part of the system. So for day one, we knew it had to come into the office of Supportive housing. so it became a part of the community plan to end homelessness. Then we also had to align it politically, philanthropically, and so our Measure a, from 2016, which was an affordable housing bond, a$950 million affordable housing bond, was really successful. Um, because we were able to build a preservable, lot of affordable and supportive housing, and of course that helped to create resources and momentum. And that, of course was really helpful because not only is prevention helpful, but we need then the affordable housing, for families as well. And then of course, destination Home really helped with the philanthropy part that helps with the flexibility and the innovation so that we can move really quickly so that we can be flexible and create this really flexible system. And then we talked about, and David talked about, the pilots and the evidence, and that was really important because the proof of concept was really important. So early prevention pilots showed that measurable success. And then data, of course, we needed this evaluation and we wanted to have like datadriven results. We wanted to. Have the system be equity focused, so that we can build trust across the systems because we knew it couldn't just live in the smaller piece. So we wanted it to be a part of like the bigger systems, because longer term we knew that we needed to at some point build it, you know, across behavioral health, legal system made the school system. And so we knew that having that data driven focus was gonna be essential long term. And then again, making sure that it was part of our supportive housing system. It was intentionally designed, to be incorporated at some point within that. I think funding of course is really important. And so we had to have graded funding and so we wove in, you know, city funding, county funding, philanthropy, state dollars, in order for us to be able to stabilize operations and really protect our system. Um, you know, having a single source risk and obviously times are currently unstable. And so we wanted to prevent against any time, any type of instability or service gaps. And then part of, you know, a key condition for us is really data, data and more data. Chad talked about, inputting information into our HMIS system, which ultimately is really important because that's how we track our outcomes and we're able to basically show, um, through life dashboards and communicate results transparently to be able to, you know, make changes and improvements and show credibility and transparency. And so the data was a really important piece. and then I think beyond the data, which is really important to us for obvious reasons, the data I think coupled with like storytelling that has impact I think is really important. And so when you pair the metrics, which luckily have been successful from day one, paired metrics with like actual human stories, with which destination home our partners are really good at, is, was really important for us to build support and to keep the why front and center, for our programs. So I would say that those were some of the things that allowed prevention to be really effective and for us to be able to prove that it worked, show that it worked, demonstrating it through like the data, through storytelling, and to be able to, um, scale it and sustaining the approach. And even though we've scaled it significantly, again, Chad mentioned that we started serving 200, now we're over 2,500. even though we've scaled it significantly, the outcomes have consistently re remained really positive.

Speaker 10 28:20

That's amazing. Jessica. I love how you focus not just on. Sort of the operational requirements and context, but also how important things like long-term partnerships and trust between the partners are. things like keeping, I love how you talked about keeping the why front and center for your team. So always remembering that behind the data, right? Every data point is a person. And keeping those outcomes really front and center for people, that's part of a, a culture shift. Right. And, I think a lot of what you talked about really represents, kind of all the learning that you did along the way too. So it's really, I mean the, you know, this just reinforces for me the importance of having, you know, community there along with our nonprofit partners, our research partners, philanthropic partners. And then, like you said, storytelling to the community. It's, it's so important that we be able to talk about this in a way that, helps to demonstrate to people who vote for these investments, you know, how things are working. So, so thank you so much for sharing all that.

Speaker 2 29:40

Yeah. And Jessica, I think there are so many valuable lessons that can be learned from the Santa Clara County case study and context that I'm hoping that other folks in this call can take back to their counties and cities as a way to address homelessness. And I think whenever we see. A research backed solution that has been able to move the needle as much as the Santa Clara County Homelessness Prevention System was able to, you know, us folks within the evidence-based policymaking community are jumping up and down for joy because it's, it's almost a, a pretty rare instance. And one goal of the evidence-based policymaking movement is of course to spread really good ideas, ideas that may have been tested in one context, to see whether or not they ultimately can move the needle in another context. And at JAL we often emphasize the importance of first determining the problem that you are trying to solve for, and whether this underlying problem is similar across different jurisdictions. So, for example, that problem in Santa Clara, is that the same problem that Atlanta, Georgia might be facing?

Toolkit for Other Cities and Counties

Speaker 10 30:43

Yeah, that, that's a really great point, Vincent, because you know, even if we. Have an evidence-based idea. It's not always clear that, you know, the tool from one place can really apply well in another place. And, you know, I mean that might sound obvious, but we don't always kind of like, really dig underneath to really think about, you know, what are, what's the context and the conditions in one place? How do they translate to another place? What do we have to adjust? What do we have to count for that's different? So I wanna, I wanna turn to David A. Little bit because David, I know you've been really instrumental in pulling together, this worked from Santa Clara and other, you know, lessons you've learned from other places as well so that we can scale this into other places. So tell us a little bit about how you think other cities and counties should assess if this homelessness prevention system model is the right fit. and. What, you know, what do, what do folks need to think about in terms of looking at this toolkit to understand whether it could help in their jurisdictions.

Speaker 6 31:57

Yeah. Thanks. Great. yeah, I think the short answer is there's a, a toolkit that a big team of people, folks here at Leo, destination Home Results for America, also helped with this put together to, try to help exactly that. Like, it, it takes a little bit more than a 32nd res response on a webinar to think through, like, Hey, is this thing right for me in my community? But, so the, this group of folks, we all built together it's toolkit to try to walk through this thing, which I'm really excited about in some ways, like academics, like me, our natural response is to be like, well, we put this like wonderful, really rigorous academic 30 page paper out there with lots of technical stuff in there. And we showed, Hey, this thing makes a huge difference. Okay, here, we'll go and take it and, and do this thing that doesn't actually work, right? It's not, it's not that actually helpful for the folks on, on, on the, uh, on the call today. So the goal of this toolkit was to say, okay, what about a more, what, what about the practical counterpart to that that says, okay, now I'm convinced that this thing makes a big difference in Santa Clara. How do I think about whether, whether, and how to use it by community? So that toolkit's got six different components in it. So it walks, uh, helps the community walk through. to assess the need for a program like this. Is, is it needed in my community thinking about how to mobilize a coalition of organizations that is needed to support this type of system. Thinking about designing the, the elements of the program, how to fund that system, right? Thinking through how to then, once it's set up, how to manage that system and how to think about evaluating program success. So it takes all those different components and gives some guidance on, okay, let's walk through those different pieces. I think that's helpful because both, like, I think some communities will look at that and they'll say, Hey, yeah, we're set up for this. We need it. Like, there's need in my community, we have these components that we could put together. And there will also be other times where someone, right, someone on this call might look at it and, and, and say, actually that's a poor fit for my community, maybe, right? One of the things that's in the toolkit to take a a particular example is like, you have to have infrastructure for processing payments at scale, right? Like, it, it like for this to work like it, part of what has to happen is that there actually has to be like that, that infrastructure, to do that consistently and quickly across, across the community. Maybe that doesn't exist. And so maybe the step that today is not adopt exactly what Santa Clara did, did right now, but it's like build some of the infrastructure necessary to do that within existing organizations. So I think the toolkit's helpful'cause it, it starts thinking about what do you need in place for this to make sense for your community? and, and what's the, what's the next step?

Speaker 2 34:08

Great David, that's very, very helpful. And I think one thing that I've been really impressed with the folks at Leo in doing is facilitating some of that, some of the relationship building that needs to happen for knowledge to transfer from one place to another place. And so I know that your team at Leo has been working with Allison's team at Mary's Place to determine whether or not this homelessness prevention system might be a good fit for this new context. So Allison, tell us a little bit more about what that experience has been like and how you've been able to take some of the ideas that were first tested in Santa Clara and determine whether or not they are a good fit. And in some instances, actually adapting the parts that might not be as good of a fit for your particular context.

Speaker 5 34:50

Alright, thanks Vincent. Um, so just quickly as an overview, Mary's Place is a service provider located in King County, Washington. We work exclusively with families, with children, including pregnant people, and. We're focused a three-pronged approach to help families find and maintain stable housing. So our homelessness prevention work that we're talking about today keeps families with a history of homelessness in their homes. We also work through mobile outreach where we connect families who are experiencing homelessness as quickly as possible to help them return to housing. And then for families with deeper needs, our family shelter programs provide 24 7 care for families with nowhere to go. So it's a little level set for Mary's place there. but to your question, so initially when we were talking about engaging in research, we planned to conduct research that was really a duplication of the similar study that was already done in Santa Clara. the LEO team helped us realize that the effectiveness of homelessness prevention was already well documented, and that was just the fact that hadn't really reached our community fully yet. And so that really led to a crucial connection with the team in Santa Clara County. And they were incredibly generous in sharing their findings, sharing their lessons learned, and that really helped us to refine our research so that what we were doing is adding to new knowledge of the field rather than simply duplicating, um, existing work and proving something that, that we really already know. That's

Speaker 10 36:19

so, that's so great. Allison and I love that, you were able to connect with another place and, and really learn from them and speed along your process. So could you talk a little bit more about, like, so in those conversations with Santa Clara, what, what gave you some insight that this could probably work here in King County and what was similar and different in the context? What were you thinking about?

The Importance of Community and Relationship Building

Speaker 5 36:44

Sure. Thanks Carrie. so as I mentioned, the Santa Clara team's work was really hugely helpful in us designing our own programs. So there were strategies that they already had, and we were able to adapt some of those really based on what they had learned, um, worked and didn't. So just as a couple of examples, the team there had already validated a screening tool to assess vulnerability, and they had started with a really complex tool. And with Leo's help, they narrowed it down to a few effective questions. And so we were able to take that refined tool, add some questions that were relevant to our community, and create a ready to use screening tool without having to start from scratch. So David, when you mentioned, you know, a toolkit helping prevent folks from having to reinvent the wheel, this is really a great example of that. also participating in a randomized control trial was really new to us and we had a lot of questions. the concept of random assignment, which is a core component of a randomized control trial was, was in all honesty, pretty uncomfortable for us, um, because it meant that some families wouldn't receive help. And so the team in Santa Clara was really able to walk us through their experience and that helped us understand the process and also ultimately led us to the decision that we would be able to move forward with this type of research. so those are some of the things that we learned and kind of adapted. Carrie, you also asked about the things that weren't the same or had to be different. And so it's worth mentioning that there are, there are a lot of things about our programs that are different. Santa Clara works through a vast network of partner providers to get support out to the community. So Chad, you spoke about y'all's process to create that system and build that network, which is so amazing. But as a single organization and a community that really lacks a coordinated network of homelessness prevention providers, we didn't have the capacity to do the work in the same way. So that piece had to, and has to look really different. Uh, for us. We also have a different amount, a different structure of funding than what they have in Santa Clara. So we had to think differently about things like prioritization, maximum limits, approving large requests. our program is specific, as I mentioned, we're focused on families with children. So we had to be thinking that, thinking about that really explicitly in a way that Santa Clara hadn't had to. And then I did mention how we learned and borrowed from the screening tool, but we did make some language adjustments and we added some questions to ensure that it fit for our population and our community. And I mentioned all this to say that replication of evidence-based models is not just a direct copy and paste. so while it kids great to learn from what other communities are doing, Carrie, you mentioned local context, right? And so each community's unique. They bring their own valuable expertise and that that should be in, can be applied to ensure that things work for local context. So I think our partnership with Santa Clara with invaluable, it continues to be. Early on, they taught us that it was really important to involve our frontline staff and the research from the very beginning. side note research is extra work for your staff. So involving them as critical partners, um, proved to be really critical and staff really needed to understand the why behind the research and have some ownership in the project for it to be successful because the bulk of the work of it falls to them. the other thing I'll just shout out, the team over at Sacred Heart, Chad, you mentioned them, uh, Erin, her team are amazing. And for years we've had monthly conversations with that team creating what I'd really call an informal like community of practice. And, it's really allowed us to problem solve in real time to be together and shared challenges even if we don't have solutions to at least know that like we're going through it together. and then really, you know, work to move the mission forward in both our communities. I think it's really a true testament to the idea that we're better together. And I think that collaboration also was really crucial in helping us identify a key gap in the research. And that's namely the impact of, of different prevention models, for highly vulnerable families with children. And so our research was designed around that and is set up to fill that gap.

Speaker 2 40:54

Alison, thank you for that, that overview. And I think. That focus on the, the county to county exchange that has happened between King County and Santa Clara County. I cannot emphasize enough in terms of how helpful that has been. And I'm sure actually for the folks in Santa Clara County, it's also been really helpful to hear about the experiences in King County and how you all address homelessness in your specific context to determine what parts of the model could potentially be adapted or actually made better. So again, really wanna emphasize the relationship building aspect of the work and that information exchange that goes from, you know, human to human right, from county to county, using the toolkit as the, the underlying foundational resource to facilitate some of those conversations. I think I'm really excited about this conversation today too, and this particular study, because it also goes beyond showing whether or not a single program is effective. And so of course. It's really, really encouraging to see the positive results that are coming from Santa Clara County. And it demonstrates that there is an evidence backed model that could be replicated and adapted in other contexts. But I think zooming out a little bit more, I'm really excited to see how this study also shifts the narrative in terms of how we think about addressing homelessness and how prevention can actually be a really strong tool to turn the tide. And it also helps us see how financially precarious so many families in the United States actually are, where one incident is enough to just tip them into financial ruin and potentially, fall into homelessness. But at the same time, how really intentional, well timed and thoughtful prevention services can really make a difference. And so I'm really excited for a. Today's conversation for both of those reasons, how it's able to identify both an evidence-based intervention, but also shift the way that we think collectively as an ecosystem on how we address a challenge as big as homelessness. And so I wanna invite all of the folks that are on the panel today to share some of their reflections in terms of what you think we can learn about addressing homelessness from this study. And so maybe Alice, and I'll hand it back to you to talk a bit about that.

Speaker 5 43:06

Sure. So I'll just talk concretely about some of the things that, that we're learning through our work. so, you know, something that we're learning that I think we've always known but has become evident, every day is that families are skilled, they're skilled at navigating complex systems, but the supports that are available are just not enough or they're just, the way as systems are structured are not actually designed to be helpful. so most families that we see are single parent households that are led by black women in communities with a severe lack of affordable housing. I dunno if any of y'all live in King County, but affordable housing is pretty hard to come by. so for those families, and, and honestly for most families, one crisis can mean the loss of their home. So really when you think about systems, we see a lot of systemic oppression within current systems that continues to be clear every day. So alongside implementing prevention strategies and doing work to prevent homelessness, we also have to concurrently be working on dismantling systems of oppression for families to really achieve true stability. I also think that, part of it, you know, David, you talked about these, the counterfactual and so I think, the narrative is important and the facts are important. And so I think, you know, through this webinar and other resources, hopefully you can see how a national body of knowledge can really advance the field. And so we're hopeful that our re research contributes to the knowledge by providing this unique lens on families. So that we can continue to move further upstream and help kids from experiencing homelessness altogether and really in turn break some generational cycles, that we see bring people to our doors. And then I think, just like last thoughts here I'll wrap up with Vincent, is that, you know, we've shared about our prevention work, in a number of venues and everywhere we share about it, we find that communities are really interested. They have a lot of questions they wanna connect, but they often feel really disconnected and isolated. I think that we tend to be pretty disconnected and isolated and homelessness work in general. so we've seen that when the opportunity exists for people to be part of a learning community, people are almost always excited. So I think getting connected to the folks in Santa Clara was like a happy and unexpected part of our journey with Leo, but it might actually be the most important piece. And so, you know, we, um, we're really hopeful that we can be a catalyst for another community. Um, really just to, Santa Clara was for us.

Speaker 2 45:31

I'm seeing a lot of hearts from Jessica's screen too, so I'm sure that the folks in Santa Clara also feel that way. Chad, David, Jessica, any reflections on your, on your part in terms of what we've been able to learn from this study about how to address homelessness in the United States?

Speaker 6 45:46

I guess for me it's as similar thing to some of Allison points that like, I think it is possible for us to bubble up good ideas, right? That come from, especially in this particular moment that we're in, like to me it seems important to be able to bubble up good ideas from cities, counties, local nonprofits who are, who are doing good work. And when we can identify that, like what I love about this group of people and these examples that we're talking about today is that like we, we can do these things, we can test them, we can learn when things are making a really big difference. And then that can be mutually reinforcing across communities where. What we learned in Santa Clara and what we, we've worked with folks in Chicago on similar programming, and you see similar results and you learn, Hey, maybe this is something, the sort of thing that should be, you know, can be effective in lots of different, very different places to hear about. Right. Allison's, and folks at Sacred Heart Stories is of going back in the way they've mutually learned back and forth. The way we can test one research question in one place and a different question in another place, and everyone can learn from each other. And that collection of things is far more valuable and impactful than any of them individually. And you can start thinking about how those things bubble up to both affect those particular communities, but also have this broader impact, um, in the place, uh, that we all live. And so just grateful for that and optimistic about that ability to start with particular concrete things and move forward

Speaker 7 47:02

from those is, is what, to me is really exciting. That's great. Jessica or Chad, do you have something you wanna

Speaker 10 47:13

add?

Speaker 7 47:14

Yeah,

Speaker 4 47:15

if you could just quickly add, I mean. I think with the study ultimately reinforced in just all of the seven plus years of us doing this prevention, you know, reinforces our shows is clear, right? It's obvious that prevention works. It's, it's really important to intervene early, that we're not just reducing the likelihood of families and individuals entering homelessness, but we're also minimizing the trauma that comes with housing instability. it's cost effective, it makes sense. the costs are significantly lower than the long-term costs of sheltering or rehousing, et cetera. I could go on and on. We don't have enough time for all of that. but we've seen that consistently, you know, over and over that it's cost effective. and it's just, it's good that we're finally having this conversation. I think it's really important to invest in prevention and it doesn't, it's clear that it has, it doesn't have to replicate exactly what we've done in Santa Clara County, but prevention ultimately works. and it doesn't mean that it's the only intervention for folks, right? There has to be all kinds of, um, interventions. It's not a solution that fits everybody, but it is really important to go upstream. Um, and it does, it's gonna look different in different communities. but I'm just really happy that we're having this conversation and it's great to know, the different partnerships that we have blossomed, uh, from this work that we've been doing. And the study has just been a huge impact that it's

Speaker 7 48:42

created. I mean, the only, the only

Speaker 3 48:49

things that I would add, you know, I think it's shed a light on a couple things. One, like you can build programs that can turn the tide and that's inspiring, right? We have seen in Santa Clara County, and we can't attribute it completely to the homeless prevention system'cause there's way too many macro factors, but like. We've seen the trending down of people falling into homelessness, like from a systemic level. I think also it's really shined a light on the power of, you know, people of money. Like people need money, people need to money to afford housing. And so we've, kind of use this as a springboard to launch into many other, you know, direct cash transfer and other concepts around just getting people money who are vulnerable and need it the most. And like really trusting the agency and like humanity of people rather than building a system that does things for people. and I think it's also shined a light on the root causes of, of homelessness and all of our inequities, right? Like, uh, the jail system and the healthcare system and our social services system. Safety net. You know, I saw some comments about some kind of traditional safety net programs that, we're grateful or kind of linking because of our county involve. So it just gives us a lot more things to work on, um, while also feeling like at the same time, like we are distributing, you know, vast amounts of financial assistance directly to families who need it.

Expanding Homelessness Prevention Efforts Nationwide

Speaker 10 50:12

Yeah, that's great, Chad. Yeah, I, I kind of wanted to underscore that point about direct cash transfers and financial assistance.'cause I think a lot of times, you know, the focus is on the few, the very few cases where there's some misuse of funds, right. and yet overwhelmingly I think we're building this big body of evidence that when people are provided with the financial assistance they need, they make very good decisions about how they utilize that for food, for housing, for, education to, you know, further the opportunities for their kids or for themselves. Right. and unfortunately I think, we often end up putting in place these structures that prevent people from being able to access that kind of assistance to prevent the few bad things that might happen. And the unfortunate part about that is it shifts the balance to not really helping, as many people as we could be helping, you know, any system, there's some risk, there's always gonna be some errors in any system. And we need to make judgements about how, what level of error we tolerate in order to be able to do the most good for people. Right? And overwhelmingly, you know, people make really good decisions, especially people who don't have that many, much, many resources to begin with. They're making really good decisions about, how to utilize those resources. So. Chad and David, you've been kind of taking the lead on, you know, working with other communities around the country to see how this could be replicated. Can you talk a little bit about that? And because we have a lot of people from other places in the country here, how might they connect with you if they wanted

Speaker 7 52:10

to learn more? That, shall I start off or do you want to,

Speaker 3 52:18

either way. I, I, I'll lemme start and then I'll pass it to you because, I think you've been so, you know, destination home and, and our partners on this, like, really because of like, you know, webinars like this and like talking to communities like Mary's place in Seattle, king County and going up there and, and all the different communities that we've talked to over the years, like really see an opportunity. I guess both a deficiency and an opportunity. So there's very little to no dedicated, targeted homelessness prevention funding at a federal level in the United States. It's not even recognized as an intervention, you know, by hud for example, as part of like the, the continuum of care. just last year, uh, we went to NAEH, which is like the premier conference on homelessness and did the very first panel ever on homelessness prevention. So, by you all being here and us being here together, like we're breaking ground and then kind of building a movement around homelessness prevention. And so, because of that and because we also want to be able to really, I guess, double down, you know, on the research piece and prove that homelessness prevention will work anywhere. you know that a quick intervention for people who are super vulnerable of financial assistance and support is what it will take, for people to not become homeless in the first place. And because we are truly dedicated to ending homelessness in the United States, we are kind of going out on, uh, a new adventure, a relatively new adventure, to kind of replicate what we did in Santa Clara County, which is to prove that homelessness prevention works. We're targeting 10 communities across the country. We're intentionally, working with cities who are both rural, urban, red states, blue states, kind of a diversity of different, communities, including a tribal nation, for example, to work with the University of Notre Dame. And, you know, again, prove that homelessness prevention works. Really as a federal advocacy strategy to, really kind of help communities across the country, you know, bring homelessness prevention. we're raising funding to provide to those 10 communities. and we're also building a community of practice, that I think we know, we'd love to have everyone here as kind of like on our, on our list when we're ready to, to go. but also ultimately to advocate at the federal level that there is new funding for homelessness prevention. Um, we are not blind to the federal administration, and the opportunity that would look like today. Uh, but this is a long game, right? Like we started our prevention back in 2017 and, you know, it's 2025. And so like, it's been a journey to get to where we are. and so that's how we're looking at this effort. and I, I just, you know, I'm, I'm gonna pass it to David here in a, in a moment, but, I just wanted to kind of share, you know, I think. We've talked a lot, like, like we are not saying you have to do it just like we did it in Santa Clara County. Um, we've learned some things that we think are core principles for what makes it to be successful and what makes it, targeted homelessness prevention rather than like eviction prevention or one-time financial assistance. but this is really about the uniqueness, and the value of every community that wants to do this effort. Um, and just, you know, providing support, and creating a support network across the country. so I just wanted to share like, super briefly, like there's kind of like five core things and we've talked about all of them today. but this is kind of like just to share the information.'cause again, like a true nonprofit like fashion, like we're not, this is just to make our world a better place, right? Um, but for us, like. We feel very, strongly, and we've seen the success around prioritizing the most likely to become homeless in your community through some kind of shared assessment or shared process for figuring out who those families are. Because more than likely, at least in our community, like there's not gonna be enough resources to provide to everyone who needs help. And so prioritizing that to the most vulnerable people. And we think that every community should be defining who the most vulnerable people are, you know, yourselves, ourselves. a rapid intervention of financial assistance and supportive services that include legal services, shared data and outcomes, uh, that is fully integrated into the coordinated entry system or the homeless system of care. You know, I talked about that. creating equitable and accessible network delivery through community partners. You know, having community partners who have the trust and the access of the communities that are most vulnerable, and a public and private partnership to make sure that. Funding gets to scale. Um, but it's also flexible to serve the most vulnerable people and do whatever it takes and provide rental assistance when it's needed, but also provide, you know, childcare when it's needed and to provide, you know, money directly to the household if it's gonna become, a vulnerability for that household for you to work with the landlord, for example. And I could go on with examples, but just wanted to kinda share, kind of what we are leading with in communities of, about what we feel like is core to success. Uh, and Thank you. And, um, pass it to David from here.

Speaker 6 57:08

Sure. And I'll just say two things briefly. Like one, if that gets you excited and you're thinking about, like for some folks, right, you'll be like, oh, this is interesting. I, I'm gonna read the toolkit, and they, and maybe I can use this, my community and others are like, wow, I'm really excited about this, and like, I wanna dive into that thing and I'm really, who do I talk? Right? So I, I should give a shout out to my, my colleague, colleague, Regina Gki, who's been running all of this stuff in the, in the background here, who was great in pulling us all together today. So one to applaud her, and two, like if you're like, who, how can I. how can I get pointed in the right direction? Right. Shoot her a message in, in the chat here, or send her an email and, and, and she'll get you pointed in the right direction. If you hear what Chad's saying, you're like, and I wanna be a part of that. Right. Um, the second thing I'll say is just to tie back to where we started, like, like we've done stuff like this before in the United States, right? Like, like it's happened with veterans, with supportive housing in vash, like testing something, learning that it's really effective and then doing a lot more of it, like, and, and testing along the way and making sure that it's doing it. It's like we can do those things. And so that's part of why I get excited about this effort that Chaz's talking about. It's like we, we don't have to stop at, at one place, right? we, and that, that one place is really, really important, right? Santa Clara county's really, really important and people there, right? Every individual person there is really important. And also like, let's do more. So super excited about where things are going.

Q&A: Addressing Data, Evaluation, and Coordination Challenges

Speaker 2 58:20

This has been really great and very, very energizing. I think you all are starting a movement here across the country about how we might be able to address homelessness that really focuses on, on, on prevention. So again, a big thank you to all of you for the work that you have been doing over the past. Nearly, uh, yeah, I don't know for how long, but for a very, very long time and for sharing some of the key insights during today's conversation. I hope that folks on the call have some really valuable insights that they can bring back home to their own communities and maybe there'll be some actual opportunities for collaboration with some of the folks on this call today. So we have a couple of minutes that we can open up to question and answer. So we've been compiling the questions here on the back end. So I'm just gonna popcorn around one question we got from Joaquin Carbonell, who is the California Department of Social Services data person here? Um, he would love to hear about the data inputs to identifying those at risk of services and how the state could play a role in enabling access to those same inputs for other counties. So I'm not sure who would be the best position to answer that question. I think a couple of you

Speaker 7 59:25

might have thoughts about that. I, I could say one thing, just that,

Speaker 6 59:32

for these programs, the two that we've been talking about today is, folks are being screened for eligibility for the program using re responses that they're giving to the, the human that they're interacting with over the phone. Right. It's, it's, it's based off of what they're saying. And so here we're not like, they're not pulling in sort of like state records to, to test that. I will say there are examples of other prevention programs around the country that have been innovating with that and others, places in California, for instance. Um, of, of trying to use, other records. And that can be useful for identifying, right, when folks have a bunch of service transactions, right? They, they're interacting with a bunch of different agencies all of a sudden, all at once. Like that's the sort of thing that can be an indicator that somebody's at high risk of homelessness. And so I, I do think that's like, it's a difficult thing to do, but potentially really valuable for identifying who could potentially benefit most from a program like this.

Speaker 10 1:00:16

I'll just say I love, I love that someone from the state is thinking about that. Um, not just for this program, but just kind of globally. How can we use the data we have at the state level to help what's happening locally across the state? And we've had a really great relationship in Washington, uh, between King County and the state of Washington around, accessing state data for a variety of different programs too. So it's, that's wonderful Question.

Speaker 2 1:00:45

Got another question here related to evaluation in the absence of an RCT. So how would you recommend assessing whether or not a homelessness prevention program is effective if you're not able to actually work on an RCT? David, that question probably is a good one for you to answer too.

Speaker 6 1:01:02

Sure. And an example I can give, right. RCDs can be difficult. For instance, if you're looking for, uh, like community level impacts, right? And so a good example of this is, the home-based program in New York was probably the earliest prevention program tested by an RCT, not by us, but by others, um, that were, has PO RCT with positive results. And what's interesting about that, that they also did a community level study looking at the rollout of that program across neighborhoods. It turns out that it, it, it didn't all start in the whole city all at once. It sort of rolled out over time. And so you can see, homelessness falling an influence into homelessness falling across neighborhoods as the program rolls out too. And that gives you some idea of what community level impact is. And so there. Sometimes those studies, those are everything has to sort of come together for a study to like that, to work, because you don't get to set it up beforehand. You have to use what's already there in the world. But yeah, there are times where it's possible to use some things that approximate experiment like that, like the rollout of our program across the city.

Speaker 7 1:01:53

Awesome. Yeah.

Speaker 10 1:01:55

Uh, yeah, I might, I might just add too that, you know, I think it's really Im important. Like even when you're wanting to do an RCT, there's a lot of preparation work that's involved in that. And so you don't wanna just jump in with a brand new program and an RCT together in a lot of cases. You really need to kind of figure out what your program's all about. Use the data you have on hand to give you some ideas of where you're having success and where you might have some gaps in your learning. And then you can direct a more rigorous study towards the places you really need to learn about. So there's a lot that can be done. In terms of learning with just the data you have on hand and a lot of it's just being intentional and clear about what you feel like you, you need to learn about.

Speaker 2 1:02:44

Yeah, Carrie definitely underscore that point. And it's, it's funny, even though we at J Powell are an organization that works in RCTs, we actually spend a lot of our time telling potential partners that you might not be ready for an RCT yet. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Evidence community, sometimes there's so much pressure to do the gold standard of evidence, which is the RCT, but you never want to enter into doing an RCT when you as an organization are not ready to do so, or if the intervention is just too new of an intervention to be subjected to that rigorous of an evaluation method. So wanted to mm-hmm. Get to that point, Carrie. Okay. I think that we probably have time for one more question. So, Allison, you had mentioned earlier that King County lacks a coordinated network of service providers. Do you have a sense of what the root causes for some of this might be and how we might think about changing this?

Speaker 5 1:03:33

Yeah. And Carrie, jump in because I'm curious from county perspective if you have kind of a different lens to this. so, you know, I've been working at Mary's Place for 13 years now, and so I've seen the conversation change in this community a lot. there was a time where the homeless service system really did not see prevention work as part of, of our work, right? We were like, we are here to support people from the day they lose their housing to the day they move back into their housing. And this is our lane. And I think it's really only just been in kind of the recent past that the homeless service system has really started to understand that we cannot effectively serve people if we're not addressing and flow into our system. And that's all of our work, including the homeless service system work. And so I think part of, the challenge comes back to kind of that historical, separation, of what are the roles of each system. So that's one thing that I'd point to. I also think our funding is really. Spread in a lot of different places. And so there's not one collective body. This is part of why I love the story about Santa Clara County so much, Chad, you talk about how it was that same way in your community. and now it's different because the county has taken this kind of under, under their envelope, right? And so, um, that allows for a coordinated response. And so I think that's also part of a, part of the challenge. There's a lot of organizations doing really impactful homelessness prevention work in the King County community. And even as a prevention provider, it's hard to like know who currently has funding and what the, what are the requirements of their program and how do people get connected because we're all just doing this work pretty independently without kind of an organizing body. So those are the things I'd mentioned. You know, our providers are a really connected network. in general. We just don't have any like one entity leading the charge when it comes to homelessness prevention. Some of these questions around like who's whose work, whose work is that? So those are the, I dunno, Carrie, if that is, matches with your lived experience, but that, those are the things that come up for me.

Speaker 10 1:05:33

Yeah. I love hearing your, your, about your experience and your perspective, Alison. I think, you know, the only thing I'd add is that it's a long game, right? We've all been talking about, you know, how long it is taking to like even build the success that you see here in Santa Clara. I mean, Chad, you were talking about going back to 2017 and there was groundwork being done even before that. Right? so I think we have been making, making some progress and, it, you know, it's a complex system. There's, as Allison said, there's lots of different, you know, disconnected funding sources. It's a system that has been broken for a long time, and so we just have to. Keep our eye on the outcomes and keep at it, and keep building the partnerships and keep moving towards a more integrated system. and I think there's, you know, there's some, you know, some, like, I, I think a lot about, you know, how we made some changes in our shelter contracts to focus not on paying, you know, just for a shelter bed per night, but really focusing on paying for outcomes, right? What we really want is people to move outta shelter into permanent housing. So we can shift, you know, at, at the government kind of regional level. We can shift some of our signals into the system to get to the outcomes we want. But again, that takes a lot of time and resource and, we just have to be in it for the long term. So we're making progress. There's always more to be done.

Speaker 2 1:07:09

All right. Well this has been a really great conversation. I want to, again, thank all of you for the amazing work that you are doing and really want to thank all of the participants who joined us today for tuning in and hope folks will have an opportunity to reflect on some of the lessons learned potential things that you can bring home. And again, please feel free to reach out to any of the folks on this call if there are any additional questions or opportunities for future collaboration. So

Speaker 10 1:07:37

yeah, thank you so much Vincent, for helping to comm moderate, and we're sorry we didn't get to everybody's question. we'll collect up the questions and see if we can find ways to respond to you outside of this webinar. But we really appreciate everybody being here. And thank you for all the work that you're doing all across the country and your sustained interest in this topic.

Speaker 2 1:08:01

Thank you everyone. and big thank you again to Regina

Speaker 7 1:08:03

who, um, coordinated everything on the backend.