Policy & Practice | December 2021

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Figure 1. Spectrumof housing needs

Figure 1. Spectrum of housing needs

HOUSING SECURE

HOUSING COST BURDENED

UNSHELTERED HOMELESS

HOUSING INSECURE

UNSHELTERED HOMELESS Someone who lacks a fixed, regular, and adequate nighttime residence or an individual who is exiting an institution where they resided for 90 days or less and who resided in an emergency shelter or a place not meant for habitation.

HOUSING INSECURE Someone who lives in inconsistent or unsafe housing, including those who have extremely high housing costs relative to income, poor housing quality, live in unstable neighborhoods or overcrowded residences, and/or are facing eviction.

SPECTRUM OF NEED:

Low

High

HOUSING COST BURDENED Someone who pays more than 30 percent of their income for housing and may have difficulty affording necessities such as food, clothing, transportation, and medical care. Severe rent burden is defined as paying more than 50 percent of one's income on rent.

HOUSING SECURE A critical part of someone’s path to stability within the Continuum of Care.

SPECTRUM OF NEED:

Low

High

Source: Deloitte Development LLC

insights into the success of various initiatives, highlighting communities that are reducing homelessness. These insights can help refocus resources to appropriate geographic regions and cohorts, both locally and nationally. Los Angeles County is using its data to understand who is at risk of homelessness so it can develop more targeted prevention programs. In a recent project, researchers at the California Policy Lab at UCLA and UChicago Inclusive Economy Lab analyzed millions of interactions between L.A. County’s social services agencies and residents to improve the odds of correctly identifying who will become homeless from 1 in 10 to 1 in 2. 9 Buoyed by the results, L.A. County launched a pilot program to target at-risk individuals and families for preventive services.

don’t know where to start looking for resources or they think they don’t qualify for help because they are not “technically” homeless. The specific needs and experiences of each group determine what it will take to move them along the path to long-term housing stability. Real-Time, Integrated Data Are Necessary to Develop Effective Prevention and Mitigation Strategies Beyond recognizing the spectrum of housing needs, leading jurisdictions have made meaningful headway on de-anonymizing aggregate data on homelessness and integrating the data to derive insights. At the micro level, communities need to knowwho is experiencing homelessness, and that list needs to be updated regularly. Annual point-in-time data aren’t sufficient. Communities such as Bergen County have used high quality, real-time data to understand their homeless populations, tailor their response to end homelessness for high-risk populations, and sustain that progress over time. 7

At the macro level, there’s a great deal of information being collected on homelessness. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) collects annual point-in-time data and housing inventory count data for all Continuum of Care (CoC) programs across the country. Homeless management information systems contain data collected by each CoC for reporting to HUD. The National Center for Homeless Education also main tains a database on the education of homeless youth. State and local govern ments also collect data. Unfortunately, much of these data sit in jurisdictional silos, making it hard to build a complete picture of homelessness. But that is changing. The National Alliance to End Homelessness, for example, has created a “State of Homelessness” portal that aggregates data from across the nation, represented in visual form. 8 Users can employ the portal to examine sheltered versus unsheltered populations, homelessness by race and ethnicity, the availability of beds in each state, and trends in permanent housing solutions. Such open data portals offer

Ending Homelessness Requires an Ecosystem Approach

Homelessness is not, nor should it be, solely the government’s responsibility.

See Homelessness on page 30

December 2021 Policy&Practice

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