Episode 9: Beyond the Shelter Door: A Conversation with Shannon Isom (Part 2)

This is the second half of this important conversation. If you missed part one, be sure to go back and listen first. 

In this episode of So, Let’s Talk Columbus, Michael talks with Shannon Isom, President and CEO of Community Shelter Board. Shannon Isom brings a powerful mix of candor, compassion and deep expertise to a conversation that cuts to the heart of what Columbus is facing. Shannon helps Michael unpack the real drivers behind homelessness, the strain on our shelter system, and why this issue is about more than individual circumstances. It’s about housing, systems and the kind of community we choose to build. Join Michael and Shannon for part one of a thoughtful, eye-opening discussion that will challenge assumptions and deepen your understanding of what it will take to move forward.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome back to So Let's Talk Columbus. I'm Michael Wilkos, Vice President of Community Engagement at United Way of Central Ohio. If you've lived in Columbus for any amount of time, you've probably noticed something that's becoming impossible to ignore. More people sleeping outside, more families struggling to stay housed, and more questions about how a growing city takes care of the people being left behind. And here's the hard part. There is no simple explanation. While housing costs are rising, shelters are overwhelmed, mental health and addiction challenges are colliding with economic realities. At the same time, Columbus is growing faster than almost any metro area in the Midwest. So what actually happens when all those forces collide? Today's guest is someone who lives in that reality every single day. Shannon Isom is president and CEO of the Community Shelter Board, the organization coordinating homelessness response efforts across Franklin County. She has spent years working at the intersection of housing, systems, public policy, and human dignity, helping lead conversations that are often emotional, political, and deeply personal. What makes Shannon especially interesting is that she refuses to reduce people to statistics. She understands the data, the systems, and the human stories behind every headline. Today we're talking about homelessness in Columbus, what's really happening, what people misunderstand, where the system is strained, and what is going to take for the city to move forward. Today is the second in a two-part series with Shannon. And so now let's get ready and let's talk Columbus. Well, you're often dealing with public frustration from multiple directions at once. Residents, neighborhoods, advocates, elected officials. How do you navigate that pressure?

SPEAKER_01 1:55

At times, not well.

SPEAKER_00 1:58

I find that hard to believe.

SPEAKER_01 2:00

You know, it is it's really interesting. I've I've I didn't I I I came from what I thought was a much more difficult, we have this here, the YW, but a much more difficult mission, this intersectionality of gender, race, and class in Ohio. That's a that's a tough mission. But this mission of homelessness is much tougher. I just was not expecting that. And part of it is because of what your question there is already assuming that there's not a lot of ways to win. There's not a lot of successes that you can put your banner on. Um, we will probably never have a Me Too movement in homelessness or a George Floyd movement in homelessness. You'll probably never have that. So you are ultimately seeking a goal that won't have a um a part of this mountain that you get to rest on. There's nothing there for that. And so it makes the job of solving for homelessness difficult. I mean, I've had people even talk to me about not using the word of solving for, and I've said, okay, well, let me say I'll care for it. Um, that's been challenged too. It just um, as you do a 360 around what homelessness is, the intersectionality of other systems, how people emote or have a visceral um recoil from it, it just you you just don't have a soft place to land in it. It is also progressively, even since I've been here, political. And it is whether you're talking about NIMBY to Yimbi, not in my backyard, all the way to yes in my backyard, whether you're at the state house to local, whether I'm in Columbus or in Gahana to Westerville, people do not want to talk about homelessness, although homelessness must be talked about. And so even the conversation and how to kind of ready it and be dynamic and with nuance, to be concrete, but with a lot of gray, um, is is really tough. It's tough. You know, I was I went in and spoke about homelessness in a faith-based uh church community a couple weeks ago. And you would say, oh, okay. And I was thinking, oh my goodness, okay, I'm gonna go talk to my people, you know, church people or my people, so I'm gonna go talk to them about what it what it is to help and serve the orphaned and the and the old, the the frail, the fragile, the widowed. You know, that's biblical, that's scriptural. We're clear on that. And even there, even there, it is, you know, some, you know, this archetype of what homelessness is. And you have to convince people that that people shouldn't have to earn their dignity for us to have this conversation, that somehow housing has become commodified into you doing what's right and what's wrong, to the point where you have some communities, literally contiguous communities, that said it is um you are breaking the law by being homeless. I mean, that we've moved the conversation along to the point where we are saying that in order to get housing, you must show up in rehab. And if you don't show up in rehab for your addiction, then you don't get housing. So, what do we do with all the people that can keep their housing that are addicted? Does the the law work for them too? Or only when you're poor? So it is this it is this not um that isn't it it it isn't the serving of homelessness that's tough. Nothing that exhausts me about that. The exhaustion is these political and structural and archetype knots that somehow makes us better than. It's hard much harder.

SPEAKER_00 6:20

Let's talk about the geopolitics. A lot of people think that homelessness is a Columbus issue. You and I recently had the opportunity to go out to Licking County. I'd like for you to reflect a little bit about what rural homelessness kind of looks like in our region.

SPEAKER_01 6:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 6:36

It's not just a Columbus problem.

SPEAKER_01 6:38

I want to I want to even say before I even get all the way out to Licking County, I want to hit every single city before I hit my my border because this is a Franklin County problem. We've we've we are trying our hardest to talk to mayors in every single solitary city. Because, see, the government doesn't give dollars for homelessness to cities, municipalities, and townships. They give the dollars to the counties so that it spreads out to every single city, municipality, and township. And so community shelter board and this conversation works on behalf of every single city. I have statistics that every single city, township, and municipality in Franklin County has homelessness. I can give you your white paper on it. I can tell you where your demographic, what your demographics look like, what your population looks like. I can even tell you where your people are and when what shelter they show up in in Columbus. I can tell you exactly where that is. And so it is important before we get to Lickin County that we also talk about homelessness in Westerville, homelessness in Gahana, homelessness in in Hilliard. Yes. Hilliard, right? It's important that we talk about those places. But as we talk about rural communities, uh, which I think that uh Franklin County is disadvantaged in. Um I most most of our counties in the state of Ohio have rural communities abutted in their county, but but not Franklin County. And I think that it gives us too much of an arm's length of understanding um rural spaces and that culture and that that kind of moray that they move through. Uh, rural communities have homelessness, but it shows up very differently. Um, rural communities have young people that I say have uh transitional poverty. So uh based on how um how quickly growing the economics are in rural communities, it is displacing um young people, people just starting off. It is displacing our elders who are um on fixed income. Um, and what we're also seeing is that unsheltered homelessness is showing up because um the the the shelters even there within our communities, um, in those communities have structures that are aligned to their um politics. Uh and so we've been seeing and grappling with not only in counties like Licking County, but Butler and Fairfield and counties around our state where the beds aren't serving everyone. Um and so um, you know, homelessness is showing up, is less of the archetype of what we think that people need to do with bootstrap pulling. And it is actually showing up what we're seeing as some of the fastest growing populations, which are seniors, 62 and over, uh still youth, which are folks that don't go off to college. And we're also um seeing it still within our veterans, so those that are on fixed um income. Um, but we especially see it exacerbated um in those with mental health issues, alcohol and drug addiction, and any other intersectionality.

SPEAKER_00 10:08

Let's talk about new Americans. Over the last five years, nearly 70% of all of the population growth of our metropolitan region has been due to the arrival of new Americans. Are you seeing new Americans in the homelessness space?

SPEAKER_01 10:20

Yeah, and when we see um the most long stairs, we're seeing it with our um our people that are coming in that maybe don't have anywhere to go, waiting on paperwork, uh, waiting to be settled in. Um but what we also find within those communities of new Americans is that they also have um cultural safety nets and ethnic, uh, an ethnic safety net that also is really, really helpful. We've been working with and have worked with and continued to expand for some new Americans, uh, whether it's with the county, but also with some nonprofits, that there are safety nets there that have um um have really been very, very helpful. Um and so when when you're asking that very specifically, that is probably the the um population or the subpopulation that I'm probably the least worried about just because of how the readiness of of our systems are able to respond.

SPEAKER_00 11:17

So, what keeps you up at night when you think about all these issues?

SPEAKER_01 11:24

Um the number one thing that keeps me up at night uh is um that I am um preparing that I'm prepared to sit at tables to respond to homelessness when it always presents as or could present as something else. So I I in a lot of ways am sitting at tables talking about politics and isms, um fear and anxiety of populations, and really talking um less and less and less about how to solve for homelessness. And I and I I think often about how do I um better uh be an advocate and change the conversation, how do I do that better? How do I uh show up and solve for that better? When I say I, I'm really meaning our system, our partners. Um, the second thing that keeps me up at night is the political backdrop nationally and federally. Um we have 16 partner agencies that are depending on community shelter board as a unified funding agency, and we have uh six plus more informal partnerships in this community that respond to unsheltered homelessness and homelessness on our on our behalf. So at any point in time, we're taking care of 2,000 plus people, um, men and women, singles and families, frail and the fragile, at any point in time. And it is really dependent on us being um funded wholly and securely at the federal level. We are ranked number two in how much funding we get federally. We show up uh at the federal level with excellence and with quality and with exceptional outcomes because of those partners. And because of that, we are literally ranked number two in how much money we get as a continuum of care. The only county that is above us is a county um, you know, bigger than us, maybe out in LA. We're ranked number one on how much money we spend and how effectively we spend it.

SPEAKER_00 13:45

Congratulations.

SPEAKER_01 13:46

Yeah, we do it excellently, and so that keeps me up that this backdrop of criminalizing homelessness and then decreasing our dollars if we don't get that right, um, is is is troubling. And then thirdly, that I uh and our system never ever ever tires and becomes weary of um the dignity that we must show and every policy and process and program for the people who are depending literally on our on their lives on us to get it right.

SPEAKER_00 14:24

So this year, community shelter board turns 40. 40. Let's talk about the future. Uh, what would actually make the biggest difference for you over the next five years? Is it more housing, prevention, mental health infrastructure, better coordination, all of the above? What are you hopeful for?

SPEAKER_01 14:45

So I'm gonna give a little, I'm gonna get a give you a little bit of a metaphor. So we turned 40 in June. Literally, we turned 40 in June. And I liken our first 40 years as growing up. And in this last year of us being 39, it is time for us to stop asking mom and dad for money. We are 100% subsidized, 100% subsidized. This great system that was built from the federal government HUD, who gives us our first tranche of money, and as good stewards, we protect it, we've done well by it. Ranked again, number two in how much money we get, and then number one and how much we we spend. And then we layer it with county dollars and then city dollars in that order, and we layer it with state dollars, and then we go out and ask our privates, our corporations and individuals for dollars. And and because of that, we deploy and leverage $81.3 million dollars across this county footprint for housing and homelessness. And so we've been doing that and doing it well for 39 years. And so when we turn 40, I say we need to get up and go to work and make some money. So, what would change us is that we utilize that that really excellence that we have, stewardship of dollars that we've been given. And we put that into the number one thing, and which um HUD says they want us to do, which is urban develops. So we want to be a developer of housing, not developing new housing. We have people to do that. But we want to take empty spaces, underutilized spaces, renovate those spaces, and create deeply affordable housing. We want to preserve housing so those buyers that are coming out of our state or coming out of our community and buying up our housing on the cheap and increasing uh those rents and displacing our seniors and making it so that our our uh newly uh graduates or or newly married folks don't have anywhere to afford to live. We want to preserve that. So, what would change everything for us as we turn 40 is if we then put those private dollars into housing, that we preserve the way in which people uh can afford housing and we keep that housing stable while at the same time turning empty and underutilized spaces into spaces for housing. We also want to, you know, buy some motels and hotels for third spacing, so that when we have winter and when we have crisis, when we have another Sawyer tower, that folks don't have to be displaced into the outside, into our shelter, but instead can go into their own space. We can wrap around services and get them quickly into housing so we can go back to those 14 days versus 114 days. That we can give dignity to children, that they never have to go to another congregate bed, but instead go with mom and dad or maybe grandma to a space that is theirs while they work on the next step to stabilize this community. And then with every dollar that we make from that rent, that we put it right back into our system so that that dollar can start not going out, but it starts exchanging right there within our system. I think that it would make for a better shelter system overall and would gain efficiencies. I think it would make our quality, which is already excellent, shoot up. And then overall, we would see better outcomes. Secondly, I think we can clean up all of High Street from downtown all the way up through Ohio State. And High Street does not have to have not one more person who is homeless. And that doesn't mean that we won't have people who are potentially there for other, um, maybe begging for dollars or other uh things, but there will not be an unsheltered homeless person on High Street between downtown, all the way to and through up through Ohio State. And we have um a wonderful what we call um high street corridor strategy in which we can do that, which will also take motel, hotel, third spaces that we can get everyone, everyone, and I mean this with absolute everyone off of high street with a level of dignity, customizing and curating the program specifically for them. We know how to do it, we've already practiced it over and over again in the winter, and we know how to do it well, and giving programs to people, um, showing up for people in where they sit and where they stand, putting them into spaces and getting them on to their next level. And so I think both of those things for us housing, um being hyper-focused on unsheltered homelessness, um, both of those investments for us would not only change this community, but would have changed it would change us in the next five years.

SPEAKER_00 19:56

Well, that's quite the vision for Community Shelter Board. Yes. Let's talk about some dollars and cents. This is a complex system. You mentioned about federal dollars. Uh the largest single investment United Way of Central Ohio makes is in your work at the Community Shelter Board.

SPEAKER_01 20:10

Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 20:10

Uh you're very welcome. I mean, clearly, as we are focused on success by third grade, if children are not in their academic uh setting, they're not going to be performing well. And so we think it's very critical that that investment is made in the community shelter board. But what does it take for you to braid so many different funding sources in order to get to your $81 million that it takes to operate the system?

SPEAKER_01 20:32

That that number continues to increase year over year. So let me let me tell you, for instance, even three years ago, 2023, when I walked in the door, our budget was 53 million. And here we are already at about 68 million, and then leveraging another uh a delta to get us up to 81 million. So this is a consistent, when you're in a growing community, this is a consistent um focus all year. We're just focused, focused, focused on dollars it needs. At the same time, there's a couple of things that even as United Way connects with us and other funders connect with us that we must keep in mind. So um even as United Way says, gosh, we need to have success, success by third grade, we also think about um uh prior to that. So um uh we have with even within our funding, how do we prevent expected mothers from moving into our shelter? Why? Because we understand that that is a predictive indicator of success by third grade. We know that that is also a predictive indicator that if a child, especially if within um who is growing, um, who's gestating within a black mom that mortality, morbidity, all of those things increase without. Housing. And so if we don't start there, knowing that the indicators around housing, that the indicators in connection to homelessness, literally, literally for specifically a black child, also determines their morbidity and their mortality, then if not for that two third grade, we should be working like the dickens in this community to ensure that not one, not one of our community members, our children are frail, are lost. And so our funding is not just, I appreciate the question, it's not just about the dollars and cents. It really is about the strategy. It really is about best practice, being really smart about what we're doing. This has less, less, less to do. We want to with that we want shelter beds funded and we need more beds and we need people in the housing. We are literally, we are literally either saving lives or we are literally determining the trajectory of someone's life. That is important to note. I think United Way has always known that. I think many of our nonprofits who work for us 365 days, this philanthropic culture of benevolence has always known when there's a gap, when two ends don't meet, there is the human condition, and that there are people voicing that. And it is easy for us as a community shelter board to say, we're the funder and we need the dollars, and here's how we organize the system, making the system ready for homelessness. But then when we get the chance to sit down with nonprofits, especially big federated nonprofits, that have their system, their own readiness system throughout the entire country, as United Way does, impacting, looking at impacting, looking at metrics and data, and doing that through legacy and history. That that what comes alive in the conversation are the people. And so what we are really doing as we're we are uh doing with you and your major impact as we're doing with the YW and their major impact as we're doing uh with Lutheran Social Service Services, and their major impact is yeah, we're doing housing. But what we're doing really is education. And what we're really doing is transportation, what we're doing is workforce, what we're doing is health care. What we're doing is changing literally the mortality rates of people.

SPEAKER_00 24:34

Let's talk about what ordinary citizens can do. Uh, what can people do that can genuinely be helpful? And what could people do to better understand this issue?

SPEAKER_01 24:44

Yeah. Um the the first thing that I would ask anyone to do is to um, which is gonna sound a little simple, but have grace for folks that are moving through probably the hardest portion of their lives, and we just happen to um be witnesses of that. Uh the second is um um to question. I I appreciate and I've told folks this, even folks that don't agree with what we're doing, that have completely different political views on what we're doing. Um, the engagement of questioning makes all of us better. And so I would ask that you engage in any way that you can. Questioning, um, because even, um as I said yesterday, even questioning the why and what means that you are an engaged person at the table. Third, that you don't opt out, you don't get to say no, not in my backyard, but yes, in my backyard, but let's do it together and figure out how to give my community still um um uh the pride of my community while helping people. I will not, I don't agree with it, I must say it that we are more um worried about the character of bricks on buildings than the character of people who we're serving. That is unacceptable. However, I appreciate the conversation uh because it allows me to say that.

SPEAKER_00 26:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 26:17

And then your your mind to shift. So that would be third, yes, yes, yes. Fourth, if you have any monicum of faith and belief, I ask that you, as um, what you've all been called to do is purpose and serving people, that that becomes a more active belief system, and that uh you get involved with any organization, civic or faith-based, and require yourself, uh, the constituency of our collective to do more and to do better. I want that much more, and I've said this even to some of our political constituents. I want that much, much more than money. Because, see, if I have that and that's aligned, money will come. Money is fleeting if it's not based in those things.

SPEAKER_00 27:11

That's a powerful statement.

SPEAKER_01 27:12

It is.

SPEAKER_00 27:14

Despite all the challenges, what gives you hope about the future of Columbus?

SPEAKER_01 27:19

Um, well, what gives me hope about anything of the human condition, and especially that in Columbus, is that hope is based on for me a uh centering of what we have yet to see. And we have lots of that. So I can't help but have hope because I have lots and lots that I haven't seen yet. And so, as long as there is what is yet to see, um so goes my hope. I have tons of it.

SPEAKER_00 27:51

Thank you. I think one of the most important things that you've reminded us today is that homelessness is not somebody else's issue. It's connected to housing, wages, schools, transportation, mental health, family stability, and ultimately the kind of community we want to build together. And the reality is fast-growing cities have choices. We can either wait until problems become crises, or we can decide that growth should include everyone. Shannon, thank you not just for joining us today, but for leading some incredibly difficult conversations with honesty, empathy, and courage. And thanks to all of you for listening to Let's Talk Columbus. If this conversation made you think, share it. If it challenged you, good. If it made you proud, even better. Until next time, remember there's not a problem Columbus can't fix.