Speaker 1: Welcome to How to Citizen with Bartune Day, a podcast
Speaker 1: that reimagine citizen as a verb, not a legal status.
Speaker 1: This season is all about tech and how it can
Speaker 1: bring us together instead of tearing us apart. We're bringing
Speaker 1: you the people using technology for so much more than
Speaker 1: revenue and user growth. They're using it to help us citizen.
Speaker 1: Welcome to How to Citizen with Barraitune Day, a podcast
Speaker 1: that reimagine citizen as a verb, not a legal status.
Speaker 1: This is a bonus episode for season three, made possible
Speaker 1: by mail Chimp. This season has been all about tech
Speaker 1: and how it can bring us together instead of tearing
Speaker 1: us apart. And I'm so excited to bring you one
Speaker 1: more story of people using technology to help us citizen.
Speaker 1: I'm your host, Barraitune Day Thurston and on this episode,
Speaker 1: we're gonna talk about homelessness and how one organization is
Speaker 1: using data to help communities across the US solve homelessness,
Speaker 1: not just manage it. This is a lifelong and personal
Speaker 1: topic for me. Every week from most of my grade
Speaker 1: school years, I volunteered with my mother at a Washington,
Speaker 1: d c. Soup kitchen and meal van, mostly Martha's Table
Speaker 1: and mckinna's wagon. For those who know d C. They're
Speaker 1: both still in operation. Today, I observed, listened and talked
Speaker 1: to my neighbors who didn't have enough money for food
Speaker 1: and often housing. Sometimes it was exhilarating. I mean I
Speaker 1: got to ride around town in the back of a
Speaker 1: van handing out donuts to smiling, grateful people. What kids
Speaker 1: wouldn't love that? Sometimes it was heartbreaking. Often I cried
Speaker 1: myself to sleep in anger and sadness at the number
Speaker 1: of folks we let go hungry and unhoused, wondering what
Speaker 1: else we could do about this. Today, the housing crisis
Speaker 1: feels more widespread and acute in many ways. Even if
Speaker 1: your own housing feels secured, you probably see encampments, read stories,
Speaker 1: or even struggle to pay your own rent and mortgage.
Speaker 1: Today I live in California, which by some measures has
Speaker 1: the largest number of unhoused people of any state in
Speaker 1: the United States. That little kid in me, he's still
Speaker 1: there wondering what we can do about all this. Fortunately,
Speaker 1: this podcast episode is a step toward answering that question.
Speaker 1: So check out my conversation with a. Rash Jason of
Speaker 1: Community Solutions, where they use data well defined goals and
Speaker 1: a sense of collective ownership to help those at the
Speaker 1: front lines of America's housing crisis solve homelessness by the
Speaker 1: end of this EPISOD. So here's my promise to you.
Speaker 1: You'll feel empowered, You'll have some more optimism. You'll see
Speaker 1: how technology can help and how you can help take
Speaker 1: responsibility for helping end homelessness where you live. Let's go.
Speaker 1: My name is I asked Jason. I work at Community Solutions,
Speaker 1: where I head up our data and technology team, supporting
Speaker 1: communities to build and use technology and data stand homelessness.
Speaker 1: I'll give you a concrete example, and a lot of
Speaker 1: the communities that we work with, one of the first
Speaker 1: things we ask that they try and engage with is
Speaker 1: just getting their arms around the scope of the problem.
Speaker 1: How many people are homeless today where you live in
Speaker 1: your community? And you'd be surprised how few communities baseline
Speaker 1: have the ability to meaningfully answer that question in a
Speaker 1: way that passes the sniff test with the folks, the
Speaker 1: boots on the ground right, or the key stakeholders in
Speaker 1: that community right. People will say that data is out
Speaker 1: of date, it's not comprehensive, it's missing a bunch of folks.
Speaker 1: It has all of these different problems. And so then
Speaker 1: what we've got actually is a really basic what I
Speaker 1: think of as mixing bowl problem. A lot of different
Speaker 1: people have data on who's experiencing homelessness, but it's not
Speaker 1: in one mixing bowl, right, So it's not a shiny app.
Speaker 1: It's just figuring out how can we get the data
Speaker 1: from your database and your database and your database into
Speaker 1: our shared mixing bowl. And the work there then is
Speaker 1: not about creating a sexy app that does that. It's
Speaker 1: about like building relationships and trust, making sure we're honoring
Speaker 1: privacy and consent, getting folks on the bus, figuring out
Speaker 1: the double data entry that's gonna need to happen, and
Speaker 1: who's going to volunteer to do that, all that good stuff, right,
Speaker 1: And so that's less about the technology. The technology enables
Speaker 1: the ability for the partnership and collaboration to happen, but
Speaker 1: actually the special sauces the partnership and the relationships um
Speaker 1: and so I think that that idea feels like such
Speaker 1: a through line that the tech is an enabling factor,
Speaker 1: but it's not solving the problem. With the high level
Speaker 1: explanation of what community Solutions is doing to help us
Speaker 1: address this pretty broadly experienced and certainly at least witness
Speaker 1: crisis of housing and lack of housing for people. So
Speaker 1: Community Solutions is powering a movement called Built for Zero,
Speaker 1: and that is a constellation of over nineties cities and counties.
Speaker 1: We call them communities that are working to use data
Speaker 1: and to tackle homelessness in a different way. And so
Speaker 1: there are sort of four key elements to the approach
Speaker 1: that we're sort of espoused and that we're working with
Speaker 1: communities to support. The first one is sort of having
Speaker 1: a collective accountability for ending homelessness using a particular definition
Speaker 1: of what it means and homelessness let's The second piece
Speaker 1: is having a shared aim, ideally making that a quantifiable
Speaker 1: aim where we can have objective conversations about whether we're
Speaker 1: making progress, what does good look like, what is better
Speaker 1: look like? And what does ending homelessness mean? Right? Do
Speaker 1: we have a shared definition of that across all the
Speaker 1: different folks at the table. The third piece of the
Speaker 1: puzzle is establishing sort of what I was talking about earlier,
Speaker 1: that mixing Bowler, that idea of quality real time data
Speaker 1: to inform decisions and also to tell us whether what
Speaker 1: we're doing is working, which I think is often a
Speaker 1: missing ingredient that I hear about when I talk to
Speaker 1: folks about efforts in their community about ending homelessness. They're like,
Speaker 1: we're doing all of these things, and I can tell
Speaker 1: you about the activities, and then when we talk about
Speaker 1: the outcomes, it's a bit of a head scratcher, right.
Speaker 1: So I think having one shared sort of yardstick that
Speaker 1: we're all using to use a sports metaphor, like we
Speaker 1: all agree with what yard line we're on, right, last piece,
Speaker 1: And I think this is important as well in a
Speaker 1: lot of places that we're doing meaningful work is being
Speaker 1: really intentional about targeted investments and tying those two reductions
Speaker 1: in homelessness and so having to dig into any of
Speaker 1: those four building blocks. But that's sort of our our playbook.
Speaker 1: But then beyond that, I think really the overarching thing
Speaker 1: we're doing is bringing folks together to learn from each
Speaker 1: other in a lot of respects. Today, in America and
Speaker 1: across a lot of the world, homelessness is one of
Speaker 1: those sort of lagging areas where whether you live in
Speaker 1: a big city or a small town or a more
Speaker 1: rural jurisdiction. There's something about the sort of status quo
Speaker 1: in our country that isn't working, and it's visible and
Speaker 1: it's tangible in a lot of different communities. That's a
Speaker 1: cult of action, yes, but it's also an opportunity because
Speaker 1: you're not the only one working on this issue where
Speaker 1: you are, and it's hard to see that often when
Speaker 1: you are boots on the ground, right you feel like
Speaker 1: I'm rolling this ball up the mountain and it's just
Speaker 1: me and my team. And so that opportunity to create
Speaker 1: the space where folks feel seen, they feel connected to
Speaker 1: others doing the work. They don't have to start from scratch.
Speaker 1: There's a good chance of the problem you're facing somebody
Speaker 1: else is facing two and they've thought about it. Maybe
Speaker 1: they even have a place to start, right. I think
Speaker 1: there's so much value in that connective tissue. You're using
Speaker 1: so much language that isn't really about technology, you know,
Speaker 1: community connective tissue, not feeling alone, learning from each other.
Speaker 1: This sounds like, you know, trust exercises in summer camp
Speaker 1: and team building much more than about servers and a
Speaker 1: p I S and you know, other more technical features. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: as do start to think about the operational weeds of
Speaker 1: what would it take for us in our city to
Speaker 1: have a shared aim and accountability and progress towards that aim.
Speaker 1: That's where you start to I think, think about, okay,
Speaker 1: some of what we need, write people at the table,
Speaker 1: shared definitions, some wonky metric in the weeds stuff. But
Speaker 1: then there's the enabling factors that I mentioned earlier, and
Speaker 1: I think tech has a big role to play here. Right.
Speaker 1: It can either be a barrier if creating the linkages
Speaker 1: between these different systems requires fifteen steps and bending over backwards,
Speaker 1: then people aren't going to do it right. Or it
Speaker 1: can become an enabling factor, right, if it's really easy
Speaker 1: to sort of send all of you the relevant information
Speaker 1: to the relevant people. I think we all actually have
Speaker 1: a lived experience here. I think many of us do
Speaker 1: of navigating healthcare, right, and if you think about the
Speaker 1: best experience that you've had, I think hopefully many of
Speaker 1: us do have. Like that one time I didn't have
Speaker 1: to refill all the forms from Scotch where like I
Speaker 1: gotta referral and my information like just seamlessly they had
Speaker 1: it and they didn't meet. They just verified that I
Speaker 1: was me, and then they had all the information that
Speaker 1: they needed to allow them to meet my needs or
Speaker 1: for us to talk about my physical therapy or whatever
Speaker 1: it is that dream scenario. What what what enables that
Speaker 1: to happen? And why doesn't it happen more often? And
Speaker 1: I think as you start to unpack that and get
Speaker 1: into the weeds the answers sometimes not always, but sometimes
Speaker 1: is tech working well or not working well? And so
Speaker 1: I think that's really part of it for us, is
Speaker 1: sort of figuring out what do we want to do?
Speaker 1: Asking that question first before assuming that tech is going
Speaker 1: to have the solution. But I think sometimes it has
Speaker 1: a role to play and what it does. I get excited,
Speaker 1: as you can tell I do. I can pick up
Speaker 1: on your excitement. I share some of it. And you
Speaker 1: mentioned that you're operating in these nine communities, which means
Speaker 1: most places you aren't. Um I want to stay at
Speaker 1: the kind of the how this feels level for a
Speaker 1: place that's working with you and your method that's different
Speaker 1: in these number of ways? How does that look and
Speaker 1: feel differently from places that aren't. What? What's what are
Speaker 1: the things that stand out? Really good question? And for
Speaker 1: reference that communities that we work with, community is such
Speaker 1: a squishy term, right, um, but really what I mean
Speaker 1: by that is it's sort of folks who are self organized.
Speaker 1: It often maps to a wonky federal jurisdiction. It's a
Speaker 1: quarter of the country, right, that's the shorthand. So yeah, wow, okay, okay,
Speaker 1: so it's not so rare. And what's what's different? I
Speaker 1: think in terms of the experience, what would what what
Speaker 1: would feel differently in one of those communities. I'll tell
Speaker 1: you from the perspective of somebody working in homeless services
Speaker 1: or homeless response, and then I'll tell you from the perspective,
Speaker 1: hopefully of somebody who's experiencing a housing crisis. If your
Speaker 1: job is case manager and street outreach worker, a city
Speaker 1: official or county official who's in the Department of Housing
Speaker 1: and Homelessness, for example. I think two things that we
Speaker 1: really evangelize. For First, we view your homelessness as a
Speaker 1: systems problem. And what that means is that it's not
Speaker 1: about the individual people and um issues that they're having
Speaker 1: or challenges. Yes, we need to know those things so
Speaker 1: that we can support those folks, but that we're pulling
Speaker 1: up and thinking about some top line metrics and and
Speaker 1: most importantly moving from a space of thinking about individual
Speaker 1: programs and projects, So like Burton Day, are you running
Speaker 1: a great homeless shelter? Awesome? What is the impact that's
Speaker 1: having on homelessness overall? In East l All the different
Speaker 1: question starts to activate you and being like, well, you
Speaker 1: alone cannot answer that question. You could tell me how
Speaker 1: many of those beds are full, how long folks are staying,
Speaker 1: whether their dignity is being met? All really important questions
Speaker 1: to be answering. But I think the big paradigm shift here,
Speaker 1: and this isn't just specific to build for zero, I
Speaker 1: think it's happening across the country is moving to a
Speaker 1: space where we review homelessness as a problem we need
Speaker 1: to solve and not manage. And so if you need
Speaker 1: to solve homelessness and not just manage it, you've got
Speaker 1: to start asking a different set of questions. And so
Speaker 1: that brings me to the second thing that I think
Speaker 1: is true in built for zero communities, which folks are
Speaker 1: either working to build a real time person level data
Speaker 1: system that could answer questions like are we making progress
Speaker 1: on ending homelessness for veterans, for folks over fifty five,
Speaker 1: for LGBT youth, right lots of different ways you could
Speaker 1: slice that data, but at the end of the day,
Speaker 1: what is true. It's got to know who's experiencing homelessness
Speaker 1: today or this month at least, right, And how is
Speaker 1: that number trending over time? And what are some of
Speaker 1: the inflow and outflow criteria right? So, how many folks
Speaker 1: are newly experiencing homelessness, how many folks move from homelessness
Speaker 1: into safe and stable housing last months? These kind of
Speaker 1: questions or to become your bread and butter if you're
Speaker 1: in the business of asking are we solving homelessness? And
Speaker 1: how would we know? Right? And so that idea of
Speaker 1: shifting the scoreboard, looking at a different set of information
Speaker 1: to give us meaning about progress that we're making. I
Speaker 1: think from the perspective of a person working on ending
Speaker 1: homelessness or working in homeless services, my hope is that's
Speaker 1: a big mindset shift. And even that idea of foregrounding
Speaker 1: ending homelessness as the mission, even if my role day
Speaker 1: to day is serving the fifteen people in front of
Speaker 1: my caseload as a case manager, yes, absolutely, let's make
Speaker 1: sure that we're doing that in a way that is
Speaker 1: as sort of evidence informed and trauma informed and preserving
Speaker 1: people's dignity and yes, all of that, and I've got
Speaker 1: to see myself as part of a bigger project, right,
Speaker 1: And I think that that's a big mindset shift. And
Speaker 1: then the perspective of the person who is on the house,
Speaker 1: who's experiencing homelessness, what is that like in in a
Speaker 1: built for zero area? So I think the direction we
Speaker 1: want to be moving is one where we are first
Speaker 1: and foremost making sure that homelessness is rare, brief and
Speaker 1: non recurring or one time. That's sort of the and
Speaker 1: that is a a a sort of through line that
Speaker 1: the you know, the federal government has said, like, that's
Speaker 1: the goal, okay, but then in practice, what does that mean?
Speaker 1: The hope is that folks first feel seen as a person.
Speaker 1: We sometimes use this term about our idea of what
Speaker 1: that data in the community might look like, and we
Speaker 1: use a term called a by name list or by
Speaker 1: name data. And that doesn't mean that we think you
Speaker 1: should ignore privacy and share people's personal information, you know, everywhere. No.
Speaker 1: So the idea is, though, is that if I'm telling
Speaker 1: you today in my community, this is how many people
Speaker 1: are experiencing homelessness, I sure had better be able to
Speaker 1: tell you more about them. I had better be able
Speaker 1: to know who they are, what their needs are, and
Speaker 1: so that I can start to right size my services
Speaker 1: and my resources to the people who are actually speriencing homelessness,
Speaker 1: because I think if you're doing planning and advocacy and
Speaker 1: resource creation without really having your arms around the problem,
Speaker 1: you're missing half of the puzzle, so to speak. And
Speaker 1: so then you know, you could start to measure things
Speaker 1: like is the number of days on average that somebody
Speaker 1: is experiencing homelessness from touching the system until being able
Speaker 1: to move into their own apartment? What's the baseline and
Speaker 1: what direction is that moving? And for that person who's
Speaker 1: experiencing homelessness, the hope would be that number is trending
Speaker 1: in a fewer days, right, and that the deer experience
Speaker 1: of the system is one that's responsive, and that they
Speaker 1: have some line of sight into some of the top
Speaker 1: line accountability measures, which I think is part of the
Speaker 1: tricks here is often I think conversations about how is
Speaker 1: our work to end homelessness going exclude the folks who
Speaker 1: are closest to the problem, right, And so I know
Speaker 1: that in some past conversations you've talked to folks about,
Speaker 1: you know, sort human centered design or making sure that
Speaker 1: we're not you know, I think about some of the
Speaker 1: example that you gave in our recent podcast where you're
Speaker 1: talking about work in Detroit and sort of returning citizens
Speaker 1: and who's in the room informing decisions about system design.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's a big thing. That's sort of a
Speaker 1: core tenet of what we believe is you've got to
Speaker 1: start to engage the folks closest to the problems, whether
Speaker 1: that's frontline staff or folks formerly experiencing homelessness or even
Speaker 1: currently experiencing homelessness, in reimagining how those systems are configured
Speaker 1: so that you can reach that shared goal. So is
Speaker 1: that the case with with community solutions? You've got people
Speaker 1: on the front lines of service delivery and people who
Speaker 1: are experiencing homelessness helping you design this this new approach
Speaker 1: of shared accountability and person level data and real time
Speaker 1: tracking and feedback that that has been collaboratively developed or
Speaker 1: did you just whip this up, you know, on a
Speaker 1: whiteboard by yourself. Such a good question. So I'll give
Speaker 1: you a really concrete recent example. We are currently operating
Speaker 1: in a world where there's no shared national definition in
Speaker 1: the US for what it would mean for a community
Speaker 1: to end all homelessness. How do we define that? Yeah,
Speaker 1: what does success look like? What are we trying to
Speaker 1: do here? What does success look like? Benga um And so,
Speaker 1: rather than us saying we're pretty smart, we've got some
Speaker 1: folks who have been doing this work for decades. Let's
Speaker 1: just sit in a lab and figure that out, we
Speaker 1: did exactly what you described, which is, we engaged folks
Speaker 1: across communities who are currently experiencing homelessness or formerly experiencing homelessness.
Speaker 1: We made sure to engage folks who are frontline staff
Speaker 1: working in homeless services. We engaged folks who are system
Speaker 1: leaders who are ultimately like sort of viewed as the
Speaker 1: accountable authority for making sure homeless services are going smoothly
Speaker 1: in those communities. And then we also engaged folks at
Speaker 1: the federal level whose job is sort of policy setting
Speaker 1: and resource management. Tried to synthesize all of those diverging
Speaker 1: points of view to come up with how we should
Speaker 1: define that shared end. And that, I think is is
Speaker 1: the spirit of a lot of the work that we're
Speaker 1: doing is saying yes, we have some of the answers,
Speaker 1: or we have a hunch with some of the answers
Speaker 1: might be. But we need to actually center some of
Speaker 1: the folks who are closer to the work. And that's
Speaker 1: what's really powerful about getting to work at scale, right,
Speaker 1: because if I'm working with folks across the quarter of
Speaker 1: the country, there's a good chance that I can sort
Speaker 1: of pull up and see the themes that are true
Speaker 1: across l A but also rural Ohio. Right, And so
Speaker 1: then what is the through line? How do we start
Speaker 1: to create things that are working across context? You know,
Speaker 1: that's part of what the fun of my job and
Speaker 1: what our team considered. And this is the moment where
Speaker 1: you heighten your attention to pay attention to our advertisers.
Speaker 1: I'm relatively new to Los Angeles still, and our municipal
Speaker 1: government set up it's very confusing to my my East
Speaker 1: Coast mind. You got the city and the county and
Speaker 1: l A counties like eight individual municipalities, and it feels
Speaker 1: like a game of you know, people pointing across the
Speaker 1: table at each other in a in a hot potato
Speaker 1: of not it, And so where does the buck stop?
Speaker 1: How do you interact with different levels of jurisdiction around
Speaker 1: this problem. So something that's true across the country is
Speaker 1: that majority of homeless services funding, maybe not a majority everywhere,
Speaker 1: but a lot of it comes from the federal government.
Speaker 1: And the way that the federal government pushes that money
Speaker 1: out is through uh sort of this big hut program
Speaker 1: called the Continuum of Care Program c OC and and
Speaker 1: these are these warm key jurisdictions. It's not quite a
Speaker 1: county or a city. Often it's kind of a squiggly
Speaker 1: line and it looks like a gerrymander, right, But every
Speaker 1: part of the country is part of one of these
Speaker 1: continuums of care. And what that means is that there's
Speaker 1: already some pre existing governance architecture. Now not saying it
Speaker 1: works well, but there's something there. You're not starting with
Speaker 1: a clean canvas that presents some challenges to right. So
Speaker 1: for example, in Los Angeles, it's messy, right, there's the
Speaker 1: city and the county, and there's sort of thinking about also,
Speaker 1: you know, you've got all these municipalities, like you said,
Speaker 1: you've got Long Beach, you've got Glendale. So in a
Speaker 1: lot of parts of the country that is true. You've
Speaker 1: got these overlapping jurisdictions and bodies, and and ultimately, I
Speaker 1: think a lot of our work is saying, let's get
Speaker 1: the folks to the table, start with a broad, expansive
Speaker 1: set of stakeholders, and see if we can't find that
Speaker 1: shared accountability and shared in those first two building blocks.
Speaker 1: What's really interesting to me at least in thinking about
Speaker 1: somebody who wants to be involved in local politics or
Speaker 1: or two to be attuned to like what's happening on
Speaker 1: the ground in a city that you live in. And
Speaker 1: so we did this this sort of recent support of
Speaker 1: this Meninos survey of mayors, and so they went out
Speaker 1: and they surveyed a bunch of mayors across the country,
Speaker 1: big cities, small cities, and they sort of asked them
Speaker 1: about their attitudes a bunch of a bunch of different things.
Speaker 1: Over of them said they didn't currently have any sort
Speaker 1: of way to know if homelessness is turning in the
Speaker 1: right direction in their city. They didn't tie success on
Speaker 1: homelessness to reductions and homelessness. And so for me, that
Speaker 1: the alarm bells go off right. And again, I think
Speaker 1: what we hope will be different in taking this sort
Speaker 1: of different built for zero approach, and it's not just us.
Speaker 1: Other folks are hopefully doing this too. Is to say,
Speaker 1: if we are focusing on homelessness as a solvable problem.
Speaker 1: Step one, let's define what that means ending homelessness. I've
Speaker 1: got some ideas about that. Federal government has some ideas
Speaker 1: about that. Great, let's get that shared aim. Step two,
Speaker 1: let's what's the scoreboard? Where do I go to see
Speaker 1: how we are doing in l A on ending homelessness?
Speaker 1: And I think we've all gotten in the last two
Speaker 1: years a crash course in what this might look like
Speaker 1: on COVID dashboards. Right, I know where I live now.
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna say it's perfect, but I know somewhere
Speaker 1: I can go to understand the state of COVID cases
Speaker 1: of hospital utilization rates. That's that's really great. That's a
Speaker 1: really great because I've used those myself as I've traveled
Speaker 1: and like I'm I going into a hot zone. You know,
Speaker 1: can I afford to to twist an ankle? And then
Speaker 1: this part of the country is now a bad time
Speaker 1: to go hiking, you know, based on the icy U
Speaker 1: capacity or will I will I will I be able
Speaker 1: to get a bed pretty easily? Should something terrible happen,
Speaker 1: and it really depending on the wave of COVID we're in,
Speaker 1: It's affected my choices, and I felt like I've been
Speaker 1: able to make an informed choice. And I think what
Speaker 1: you're describing with this idea of a dashboard and you know,
Speaker 1: shared aim and then shared progress reports is not just
Speaker 1: useful for the service providers and government officials and those
Speaker 1: experiencing homelessness, but all of us to know how we're doing.
Speaker 1: Because here's my dashboard. I see tense cities, right I have.
Speaker 1: I have an anecdotal visual dashboard. I see headlines as
Speaker 1: I scroll through various feeds and news reports. I hear
Speaker 1: about police actions and things being closed down, and have
Speaker 1: a general feeling that housing is harder to come by.
Speaker 1: I have some personal stories, but mostly that are slightly
Speaker 1: distant removing. I just I could walk away from that
Speaker 1: feeling like everything is just getting worse, you know, everywhere,
Speaker 1: all the time, and that that might that might not
Speaker 1: be the case. It probably isn't the case. So that
Speaker 1: that dashboard, that shared progress report, it feels like that
Speaker 1: can also help the public broadly understand how we're doing
Speaker 1: and vote accordingly and fun things accordingly or change how
Speaker 1: they're voting and what they're funding because we know the outcomes.
Speaker 1: And so then something as simple as what you described,
Speaker 1: which is like bar chart of how many people are
Speaker 1: holmemlest today and what direction that is trending over time, right,
Speaker 1: which is not like a revelatory you know, it sounds
Speaker 1: very simple or really complex algorithm, right, Like, really, what
Speaker 1: we're talking about here is descriptive statistics, like just tell
Speaker 1: me what is happening, show me, make it visible to me.
Speaker 1: That's I think a little bit of my view of
Speaker 1: where we start. And then you start to unpack it, right,
Speaker 1: and to ask some more interesting and sophisticated questions. So
Speaker 1: I'll just name I think a thing that you need
Speaker 1: to do as soon as you build that dashboard is
Speaker 1: to be able to start to stratify it by at
Speaker 1: least race and ethnicity. And the reason why is that
Speaker 1: we have national data that shows us that even when
Speaker 1: you account for poverty rates, black and Native Americans are
Speaker 1: massively open represented and homelessness. I think there's some working
Speaker 1: theories of the why there. But again, you're solving homelessness,
Speaker 1: how do we know that we're doing that in a
Speaker 1: way that's equitable that's not leaving anyone behind. And you know,
Speaker 1: there's so many other ways that you might want to
Speaker 1: look at that data, right by zip code or or
Speaker 1: sort of neighborhood. You might want to look at that
Speaker 1: data based on age or other demographic criteria. You might
Speaker 1: want to look at where folks were before they experience homelessness.
Speaker 1: There's some thing very anonymous about, you know, our national
Speaker 1: experience of homelessness. I can remember, as a New Yorker
Speaker 1: for twelve years the annual homeless census that would happen,
Speaker 1: and so I'm just like, Okay, I know what a
Speaker 1: census is. And they're they're sending people out with essentially
Speaker 1: clipboards to like count faces and shopping cards and head
Speaker 1: count as reported, it's very impersonal, almost dehumanizingly so where
Speaker 1: it's just this anonymous pile of people with no personality
Speaker 1: to it. And you've used the phrase in your website,
Speaker 1: you know, repeats this person level data. Tell me how
Speaker 1: you're what you're collecting in terms of personal data, why
Speaker 1: you think it's valuable, and how it helps you approach
Speaker 1: the problem more effectively than what we've historically been doing
Speaker 1: around data. Absolutely, so I think I have also participated
Speaker 1: in that homeless census or point in time count. I
Speaker 1: think it's when you think about halflow is there's a
Speaker 1: no loaf. So if the data that we're using UM
Speaker 1: for apples to apples measure is that census, I'll take it.
Speaker 1: If the alternative is not a But like you said,
Speaker 1: it is dehumanizing, and I think that it also isn't actionable,
Speaker 1: right because I don't necessarily have the information about those
Speaker 1: folks to be able to understand their needs and so on.
Speaker 1: So we are not sort of collecting that level of
Speaker 1: data because we're not trying to be the national homeless
Speaker 1: database data warehouse. But what we are doing is supporting
Speaker 1: local teams to make sure they have that integrated data
Speaker 1: source at home and that they can push aggregated data
Speaker 1: to us that's tied to that person level data, so
Speaker 1: that they could do the version of run me a
Speaker 1: report that gets me that homeless census equivalent or at
Speaker 1: least the way there on any given Tuesday. That's the
Speaker 1: sort of test or goal that I sort of have
Speaker 1: folks orient around. And so then you start to ask
Speaker 1: who would need to be at the table for us
Speaker 1: to feel confident that we knew all the people who
Speaker 1: are service connected, and then crucially, how would we know
Speaker 1: about the folks who aren't yet service connected? And often
Speaker 1: that means street outreach, that means setting up a two
Speaker 1: on one hotline. Depending on where you are, it looks different.
Speaker 1: It's not going to be bulletproof. But again just saying like,
Speaker 1: what is the direction that we can head into where
Speaker 1: we're getting closer to comprehensive, real time person level data.
Speaker 1: And then on the person level side, I think there's
Speaker 1: this question too of what information do you really need
Speaker 1: about folks to be able to understand what their housing
Speaker 1: needs are? Right? And I think depending on program eligibility
Speaker 1: and design, those pieces of information vary. Some of it
Speaker 1: is a sensitive information. And so then we do want
Speaker 1: to design data systems that do retain sort of privacy
Speaker 1: controls and maintain people's right to anonymity. You know, we
Speaker 1: know that there's overlap between you know, runaway homeless youth
Speaker 1: for example, folks who are survivors of demandstic violence. So
Speaker 1: I don't want to take lately the idea of privacy.
Speaker 1: And I think we all live right now at a
Speaker 1: time where we know so much of our personal data
Speaker 1: is made accessible right um, so we want to safeguard
Speaker 1: some of that and at the same time we can't
Speaker 1: be paralyzed. I think our team has a point of
Speaker 1: view on how you can coach or support a team
Speaker 1: to not have to start from scratch and to start
Speaker 1: to do some of those things like all right, what's
Speaker 1: the structured exercise do you do to figure out who
Speaker 1: needs to be at the table? How would we print
Speaker 1: out or use a sort of r G I S
Speaker 1: map to look at our continuous care or our community's
Speaker 1: footprint and talk about where are we doing street outreach?
Speaker 1: I gotta pause you. You threw out a term and
Speaker 1: some letters next to each other that I am confident
Speaker 1: most people don't understand, and arc G I S map
Speaker 1: break that down for me? Happy to just a virtual
Speaker 1: geospatial maps. So basically think about Google Maps as a
Speaker 1: really helpful touch point, right, but Google Maps with sort
Speaker 1: of a boundary around our community and then the ability
Speaker 1: to sort of drill down and talk about, all right,
Speaker 1: do we have some foe to go and actually canvas
Speaker 1: walk the blocks right to see who's experiencing homelessness, to
Speaker 1: talk to them, not just to sort of count their
Speaker 1: faces like you were saying but to actually build some relationships,
Speaker 1: understand people's needs and so on. And I think especially
Speaker 1: in places, um where it's a mix of urban and
Speaker 1: sort of more suburban or rural together, what you'll often
Speaker 1: find is folks are really attuned to walk in the
Speaker 1: downtown blocks and nobody's going over there to that residential
Speaker 1: neighborhood that's mostly people of color or lower income folks, right, um,
Speaker 1: and so what about the folks camping over there? How
Speaker 1: will they get service connected? Right? How will how will
Speaker 1: we know them by name so to speak, or allow
Speaker 1: the system to feel on the hook for resolving their
Speaker 1: experience of homelessness. Because again I think if we've if
Speaker 1: we're creating this beautiful dashboard or a place that you
Speaker 1: and I are going to know, how are we doing
Speaker 1: on homelessness? A big risk is that if you're missing
Speaker 1: a slice of the pie, we start to pat ourselves
Speaker 1: on the back for making gains that don't benefit South lay,
Speaker 1: that don't benefit you know, folks on the other side
Speaker 1: of the river in d C. So to speak, Like,
Speaker 1: those things I think for me really stand out as
Speaker 1: so earlier you can start to think about those things
Speaker 1: and make sure folks from those neighborhoods and communities are
Speaker 1: at the table. The more reliable the data is going
Speaker 1: to be, the more confidence we can have in that
Speaker 1: as our understanding of our shared score board towards Saurday.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of money in trying to solve some
Speaker 1: of these big societal problems, like you know, unhoused folks,
Speaker 1: and in every arena where there is a lot of money,
Speaker 1: there can be a lot of competition, even in including
Speaker 1: the nonprofit sector, and that can lead people to not
Speaker 1: play well with others, to want to keep things proprietary,
Speaker 1: to hoard information or resources or connections their rolodecks. Do
Speaker 1: you encounter that level of isolationism competition as you work
Speaker 1: across so many existing silos. There's some, but I think
Speaker 1: it it sort of depends on how you frame it
Speaker 1: and how you activate folks. For a long time, I
Speaker 1: think the status quo in the homeless response sector was
Speaker 1: that we thought about program and project level metrics. Right, So,
Speaker 1: how is bartun Day's homeless shelter doing. Let's make a
Speaker 1: dashboard that shows their outputs and outcomes um and then
Speaker 1: make sure that they're getting the important funding they need
Speaker 1: from federal partners and elsewhere. In the last ten years,
Speaker 1: there's been an exceed change, and not just because of
Speaker 1: our work, but lots of other good folks doing work
Speaker 1: out in the field to say, actually, what we need
Speaker 1: our coordinated systems that start to look beyond program project
Speaker 1: to talk about system or community language. And I think
Speaker 1: that's part of the challenge, honestly, is to create the
Speaker 1: space for people working in homeless response or homeless services
Speaker 1: to see how their work rolls up to that big
Speaker 1: picture aim. Because I think if we don't do that,
Speaker 1: you're totally right, which is what We'll have one dashboard
Speaker 1: that the mayor and that you and I are looking at,
Speaker 1: and the other one that's meaningful for the boots on
Speaker 1: the ground, and we got to sink those things up.
Speaker 1: There has to be some way in which I see
Speaker 1: how my contributions on the front line roll up to
Speaker 1: that COVID dashboard number, right, And I think that again,
Speaker 1: what's awesome is that we have this accessible, I think
Speaker 1: for all of us today, for better and worse, involuntarily.
Speaker 1: So but yeah, we're all way too familiar with infection
Speaker 1: rates and are not and hospitalization rates, and I see
Speaker 1: you capacity and how you as a citizen in your
Speaker 1: community or somebody working in a hospital. What is your
Speaker 1: role to play in that data? You have one right
Speaker 1: and we've really like tried to public health message with
Speaker 1: mixed results where am as socially distance you have a
Speaker 1: role to play. Then the curve right, and so what
Speaker 1: is the analog here for homelessness in housing? I think
Speaker 1: there there is one or there is a role for
Speaker 1: us to play. And especially if you work in the
Speaker 1: space right like, it's crucial that you see the work
Speaker 1: you're doing, whether as a policymaker or a frontline staffer,
Speaker 1: or somebody working in a healthcare system or another adjacent system.
Speaker 1: What's your role on the work to end homelessness where
Speaker 1: you live? And how do we make it easier for
Speaker 1: people to ask and answer that question. I mean a
Speaker 1: lot of the tools you're using sound like the way
Speaker 1: many of his experience. You know, any digital service at
Speaker 1: this point right there trying to know their customers. They've
Speaker 1: got dashboards, whether it's like a ride share company or
Speaker 1: an e commerce company, auto business, there is much more
Speaker 1: real time. You know, you don't take a snapshot once
Speaker 1: a year and use that to guide your decision making,
Speaker 1: and you don't exist for years on end without actually
Speaker 1: understanding who you're serving, you know, and and getting user
Speaker 1: feedback and observing folks. So you're you're applying some of
Speaker 1: the things from tech and business in part to this
Speaker 1: this place that could really use a boost and really
Speaker 1: use some innovation. But I'm I'm also hearing it's not
Speaker 1: just throwing machines, and there's a lot of soft skills
Speaker 1: going on here, some local politics, some cajol ing and
Speaker 1: enticing maybe, and and literal meetings. You know, it probably
Speaker 1: moves a little slower than than a server would then
Speaker 1: some code would compile, because you gotta get somebody to
Speaker 1: that meeting and make them see Glendale. You gotta sit
Speaker 1: next to burd Bank and we're cool and we're not
Speaker 1: trying to fight each other over this, and you gotta listen.
Speaker 1: It sounds like you do a lot of listening rather
Speaker 1: than kind of swooping in with your preferred solution to
Speaker 1: the problem. And my categorizing this balance pretty well or
Speaker 1: is there a piece that I might be missing it.
Speaker 1: I think you're categorizing it well. And what I'll say is,
Speaker 1: I think part of working at scale forces you to
Speaker 1: view the forest, and what I mean by that is sure,
Speaker 1: I could try and create the perfect bespoke tech solution
Speaker 1: that really fits today's workflows in my one community. And
Speaker 1: the reality is, what we've seen is that the portability
Speaker 1: of those awesome solutions. Right. I've been part of multiple
Speaker 1: hackathons that involved large fortune tech companies bringing top engineering
Speaker 1: talent to bear on trying to create something that's going
Speaker 1: to meaningfully contribute to ending homelessness where they are and
Speaker 1: I laud those efforts and I think that there's value
Speaker 1: in them. And what makes the transportability of those solutions
Speaker 1: hard is that today, at least a lot of the
Speaker 1: plumbing the foundational work nationally isn't there. I think this
Speaker 1: is not just true in homelessness, right. Um, you know,
Speaker 1: I think a year or two ago, a lot of
Speaker 1: the country started to pay attention to police data and
Speaker 1: police incident data, right, police involved shooting data, if we
Speaker 1: want to use that language, and again it's apples to oranges.
Speaker 1: I could build something awesome that works for one city
Speaker 1: and then the ability for another police department to piggyback
Speaker 1: and say, let me just download that from the app
Speaker 1: store and start using it, right, And so what is it?
Speaker 1: And you know, we started to dig into some of
Speaker 1: these foundational questions just in the last year or two, honestly,
Speaker 1: to think about what would enable the space to be
Speaker 1: more like that. I I brought up the example of
Speaker 1: healthcare earlier, and top of mind for me these days
Speaker 1: is if you are somebody who's experiencing has in crisis
Speaker 1: or homelessness, you can today almost anywhere download your own
Speaker 1: profile so that you have tangible ownership of that data
Speaker 1: so that you can just forward it onto your next
Speaker 1: case manager or choose to disclose or not disclose. Right,
Speaker 1: So that feeling of what does it feel like to
Speaker 1: be on the receiving end of this service machinery? Right,
Speaker 1: all really well intentioned. But again I think there's this
Speaker 1: quote that we often talk about. Every system is perfectly
Speaker 1: designed to achieve the results that it gets, right. It's
Speaker 1: it's sort of credited to outward DEMI is like the
Speaker 1: father of quality improvement science. But but to me, what
Speaker 1: that means is not malintention. It's just the thing that
Speaker 1: we've chosen to prioritize. Right. For a long time has
Speaker 1: been are we spending money? Well, that has been the question,
Speaker 1: and more narrowly than that, are we running effective programs
Speaker 1: and projects to manage homelessness. And so we've got a
Speaker 1: ton of machinery and a ton of infrastructure designed to
Speaker 1: answer that question, and folks are trying to bend that
Speaker 1: machinery to answer a different set of questions. And that's
Speaker 1: what a lot of our work is is designed to
Speaker 1: help people pivot those systems that are designed to answer
Speaker 1: one set of questions to try and solve homelessness and
Speaker 1: asking answer the questions needed to do that. There's ah,
Speaker 1: that's this is good. Now we're now we're GM and
Speaker 1: not that we were before. But I'm really feeling this
Speaker 1: because so much of our experience with technology as users
Speaker 1: sometimes victims is uh, we're engaging with a system designed
Speaker 1: to answer a question we're not aware of. No, we
Speaker 1: think by way of of loose and slop. Example, we
Speaker 1: think that you know, Facebook is answering the question how
Speaker 1: can I stay in touch with my friends and family?
Speaker 1: And the question they're trying to answer is how can
Speaker 1: we monetize our knowledge of your behavior by selling it
Speaker 1: to brands and agencies? Right, That's that's probably a higher
Speaker 1: priority question. There are is answering many questions, but their
Speaker 1: system is designed to optimize outcome for monetization of user
Speaker 1: behavior and data, not necessarily the quality of your relationships
Speaker 1: with your friends and family, much less the fabric of
Speaker 1: our democracy and the sustainability thereof. So if we were
Speaker 1: designing a system that was like, how do we build
Speaker 1: healthy communities where people feel seen and can interact even
Speaker 1: across difference, we probably wouldn't build this version of Facebook.
Speaker 1: But that's not what the VCS funded. That's not the
Speaker 1: question they were asking, and they were in charge of
Speaker 1: how that tool got deployed ultimately, So this is really
Speaker 1: good around homeless services as an example, are we trying
Speaker 1: to manage are we trying to optimize program output, or
Speaker 1: are we actually trying to in homelessness and achieve this
Speaker 1: thing that that your organization calls functional zero in terms
Speaker 1: of the experience and the quantification of homelessness in any
Speaker 1: given community. So my question to you, what is the
Speaker 1: community look and feel like when it achieves functional zero
Speaker 1: when you actually end homelessness overall or at least for
Speaker 1: major categories that you're tracking, because your data is so
Speaker 1: much more personalized. So I think it looks two ays. Uh. First,
Speaker 1: for the person who's experiencing a house in crisis, it's rare.
Speaker 1: That's one one important piece. It's a brief. Right. So
Speaker 1: the amount of time you spend in the waiting room,
Speaker 1: so to speak, right, if we want to use the
Speaker 1: analogy of a hospital, is relatively little. The waiting room
Speaker 1: of available housing. That exactly right. How long is somebody
Speaker 1: in a homeless shelter or sleeping outside? Right? How long
Speaker 1: are they experiencing homelessness but connected to services before they're
Speaker 1: able to get some support? Right? That ultimately is sort
Speaker 1: of so let me, let me, let me I want
Speaker 1: to Actually, I'm gonna split this into two different questions.
Speaker 1: So first, what is your definition of ending homelessness or
Speaker 1: or what are some examples of definitions your team has
Speaker 1: seen from the various places in which you're operating. Sure,
Speaker 1: so we have a shared definition that we use nationally
Speaker 1: that you mentioned called functional zero. The shorthand version of
Speaker 1: it is that very few people are experiencing homelessness at
Speaker 1: any given time. And then when you double click on that,
Speaker 1: what needs to be true is that few people enter homelessness,
Speaker 1: you're able to support the folks who are experiencing homelessness
Speaker 1: pretty quickly, and that when folks leave homelessness, they don't
Speaker 1: cycle back, right. So again just at a conceptual level,
Speaker 1: pretty straightforward, and we sometimes you sort of the analogy
Speaker 1: of what would it look like if you started to
Speaker 1: think about an empty bathtub. Well, I want to make
Speaker 1: sure that the rate of which water is draining out
Speaker 1: of the bathtub is pretty high, and I want to
Speaker 1: turn the faucet off, right, and so both of those things.
Speaker 1: And then when you start to get into the weeds,
Speaker 1: well we got to figure out where are people coming
Speaker 1: into homelessness from, what is the precipitating events or what
Speaker 1: what is happening in people's homeless histories. And unsurprisingly, what
Speaker 1: you look at across the country, I think is that
Speaker 1: we don't know a ton because our data hasn't been
Speaker 1: that strong. But what we do know is that it
Speaker 1: maps largely to network poverty. In other words, you can't
Speaker 1: make rents and nobody can fill the gap for you.
Speaker 1: And you know, I think we know which groups historically
Speaker 1: in America are have been most likely to experience network
Speaker 1: poverty and the deep structural racist roots of that truth, right,
Speaker 1: Black Native Americans. I mentioned it earlier. The other thing
Speaker 1: that I think is true is that there's this moment
Speaker 1: of you know, I mentioned your conversation about returning citizens, right,
Speaker 1: And there was a line in there that I think
Speaker 1: Shaka said where he said something along the lines of
Speaker 1: I'm having trouble getting an apartment or I didn't know
Speaker 1: what it would be like to try and meet eligibility
Speaker 1: criteria or get screened out of being able to rent
Speaker 1: an apartment. Right. Is that we've got all of these folks,
Speaker 1: whether they returning citizens, folks discharging out of foster care systems. Um,
Speaker 1: we talk about adjacent or upstream systems. Right. So the
Speaker 1: idea of what parts of the social safety net shabby
Speaker 1: though it might be in America or other systems, are
Speaker 1: people touching before they experience a housing crisis or before
Speaker 1: they become homeless? Right? And the answer is often one
Speaker 1: or more systems? Right? And so what would it look
Speaker 1: like for those systems to start to view their responsibility
Speaker 1: as Hey, I've got a metric of nobody leaves our
Speaker 1: system and enters homelessness, right, and can we even track that?
Speaker 1: And what would that look like? What would it take?
Speaker 1: And and we're doing some cool work right now. I
Speaker 1: don't think we've got it figured out, but there's cool
Speaker 1: work with some some big not even public just like
Speaker 1: private healthcare entities, to just say like, hey, you've got
Speaker 1: this huge footprint, you have all these emergency rooms. It
Speaker 1: actually benefits your bottom line to have fewer people homeless
Speaker 1: because we know that those folks can cycle in and
Speaker 1: out of emergency rooms and have adverse health outcomes. So
Speaker 1: it's not just the right thing to do, but it
Speaker 1: also sort of aligns with your profit motive. Great, awesome,
Speaker 1: Let's figure out what it looks like for you to
Speaker 1: have a goal of nobody leaves your hospital and enters
Speaker 1: homelessness over a window of time, or start to activate
Speaker 1: you as feeling part of solving the problem. And I
Speaker 1: think that's the thing is more than anything, what is
Speaker 1: true in communities that have ended functional zero is more
Speaker 1: and more people feel like they have a role to
Speaker 1: play in making sure homelessness has ended in their community.
Speaker 1: It's not something somebody else is doing, it's something we
Speaker 1: are doing collectively. And I think that feels really powerful.
Speaker 1: After a short break, we'll be right back the connection.
Speaker 1: It's something that we've lost in so many parts of
Speaker 1: our society and even in our own bodies. But you
Speaker 1: made me think of like a bodily injury metaphor where
Speaker 1: you know, I've had issues with a knee, and you know,
Speaker 1: if I can work on that issue by just focusing
Speaker 1: on the knee, I can get X rays of the knee,
Speaker 1: I can inject steroids into the knee. But I can
Speaker 1: also work on the muscles around the knee right. I
Speaker 1: can give massage therapy. I can do strengthening exercises for
Speaker 1: the hamstring and the quads and the calves and the
Speaker 1: shin muscles, and that can provide extra support so that
Speaker 1: a weak quad isn't exacerbating my knee pain and my
Speaker 1: knee problem. And so as you move upstream and maybe
Speaker 1: down to know where people coming from, where they're entering
Speaker 1: the crisis point from where you're seeing knee pain, Um,
Speaker 1: there may be a quad issue going on higher in
Speaker 1: the leg. And where are they going to you know,
Speaker 1: after this brief, increasingly brief period of not having housing,
Speaker 1: do you have somewhere for people to go? You know,
Speaker 1: and what role do you play in creating a resilient
Speaker 1: kind of network and shared responsibility about reducing the flow
Speaker 1: into that tub and also you know, draining it quickly
Speaker 1: when people find themselves in there to begin with. So,
Speaker 1: so where do people go in these functional zero communities
Speaker 1: when things were hmming along. I'm working much better than
Speaker 1: a lot of us have seen from the outside. Yes,
Speaker 1: so I think um to use that healthcare hospital analogy.
Speaker 1: Something that we've seen as a missing link in a
Speaker 1: lot of communities is that even when they start to
Speaker 1: think of themselves as a system with that shared aim,
Speaker 1: the triage function. So the first thing that happens when
Speaker 1: I go to an emergency room is they asked me
Speaker 1: a couple of questions and they figure out if I
Speaker 1: can chill for a couple of hours or if they
Speaker 1: need to get me into a bad space ap right,
Speaker 1: And that I yeah, I think you know it's it's
Speaker 1: not new, And I think a lot of communities over
Speaker 1: the last couple of years they've been trying to build
Speaker 1: that muscle of sort of leveraging data and process and systems,
Speaker 1: thinking to figure out how to match individual people with
Speaker 1: a level of support. But I think the challenge here
Speaker 1: is that for a long time, the tools that we
Speaker 1: were using for that process were a little bit opaque,
Speaker 1: and like you were saying earlier about Facebook and your
Speaker 1: Facebook is operating with one North star aim and you
Speaker 1: are operating with a different one. It's not to say
Speaker 1: these weren't aligned, but I think that the people closest
Speaker 1: to the problem weren't at the table for designing how
Speaker 1: that triage process would work. What was important to people,
Speaker 1: Like a really interesting experience that I had just in
Speaker 1: the last couple of years is we started to think
Speaker 1: about how could we support communities to measure the equity
Speaker 1: of their systems right. So you can imagine a world
Speaker 1: where community they're hitting all these quantitative stats, very few
Speaker 1: people are homeless. The system is is churning along and moving,
Speaker 1: and they're not serving everybody equally, or somebody is getting
Speaker 1: left out. And what we realized is that when you
Speaker 1: engage folks, it's not just the quantitative side. They also
Speaker 1: want to know how did it feel? And so so
Speaker 1: to bring it back to your question about, you know,
Speaker 1: the outflow or the moving into permanent housing in these
Speaker 1: communities that have achieved functional zero or that are doing
Speaker 1: something right or different, I think what is true is
Speaker 1: that the experience of receiving support preserves people's dignity, and
Speaker 1: more than that, they feel like the system was responsive
Speaker 1: to them. And for me, I'll admit this was a
Speaker 1: blind spot. Right. It's not just how many days somebody
Speaker 1: was experiencing homelessness, But there's this more subjective piece of it,
Speaker 1: which is like what quality like the quality of those days? Right? Uh?
Speaker 1: You know? And again like I have been in a
Speaker 1: hospital bed where you press the button and a nurse
Speaker 1: doesn't come for like an hour, versus you press the
Speaker 1: button and they show up, and the two days in
Speaker 1: the hospital bed feel very differently depending on the responsiveness
Speaker 1: of that push button feeling right, And so there are
Speaker 1: so many things we know, right like that about the
Speaker 1: quality of care. And again, because we've been used to
Speaker 1: this resource scarcity and trying to optimize resources, which yes,
Speaker 1: I get it and I understand, but that scarcity mindset
Speaker 1: activates in you efficiency over everything, and the reality of
Speaker 1: being on the receiving end of an efficient system can
Speaker 1: sometimes be pretty decumanizing. And so how do you threat
Speaker 1: the needle there? It's hard, right, I'm gonna admit, I mean,
Speaker 1: part of it is how do we get out of
Speaker 1: scarcity so that we don't have to do that? And
Speaker 1: you know, in the last couple of years, there's been
Speaker 1: an influx of resources that means that in more and
Speaker 1: more places, we might not have to choose between equality
Speaker 1: of care and an efficiency standard, which is a false
Speaker 1: economy anyway. But I think we're getting to a place
Speaker 1: where people are asking those questions more often. The health
Speaker 1: care metaphor is really appropriate because it's also it's life
Speaker 1: and death is it's really a high impact sector versus
Speaker 1: like the retail shoe experience some of us have, right
Speaker 1: it's just less critical, you know, to our daily lives
Speaker 1: as important as sneakers are. Too many people listening to
Speaker 1: us right now. No offense to my sneaker heads. But
Speaker 1: a dashboard could show a hospitals having great success in
Speaker 1: their surgeries. The patient can tell you a different story
Speaker 1: about how they were ignored or disrespected or treated without
Speaker 1: any sense of ownership or agencies. I've been in that situation,
Speaker 1: family members have been in that situation, and you feel used, abused, ignored,
Speaker 1: and you realize I'm not a doctor or a lawyer,
Speaker 1: and I need to be both those things to get
Speaker 1: my needs met here effectively. And so if you're going
Speaker 1: through a not a health crisis but a housing crisis, yeah,
Speaker 1: the idea that you don't have control of your own
Speaker 1: profile and you're just kind of being passed around and
Speaker 1: somebody else's database and they're telling you things about you
Speaker 1: that aren't even true or not even asking um and
Speaker 1: the quality of your time and what's up. Well, I
Speaker 1: was just gonna say, I think I think not just
Speaker 1: telling you things that are not true, but maybe asking
Speaker 1: you to relive something super traumatic over and over and
Speaker 1: over again because their data systems can't talk to each other.
Speaker 1: So I've got to ask you about the domestic violence
Speaker 1: that precipitated you experiencing homelessness, and maybe you're not really
Speaker 1: trying to talk about that this morning. And then does
Speaker 1: that inhibit you from being eligible for this rental assistance program?
Speaker 1: Because I don't know the thing that's gonna unlock the
Speaker 1: door because finger right, Like again, what we've surfaced is
Speaker 1: a way in which the system is not designed with
Speaker 1: that user initially in mind. And a lot of folks
Speaker 1: have done really meaningful work to start to try and
Speaker 1: transform these systems, but I think we've still got work
Speaker 1: to do as a country on it. You're so, should
Speaker 1: we just put like community solutions in charge of the
Speaker 1: remaining of of this sort of homelessness response in the
Speaker 1: United States? No, and I'll even correct you and say
Speaker 1: we're not responsible for either. But I do think we
Speaker 1: should do, though, is try and get more and more
Speaker 1: of the country feeling like they're of a movement of
Speaker 1: ending homelessness. I think there's something really powerful in that.
Speaker 1: And what I see is that when folks start to
Speaker 1: expect or understand that things can be better, they start
Speaker 1: to show up in a different way, right, whether they're
Speaker 1: working in the system, whether they're an informed citizen in
Speaker 1: their community. I think starting to do this mindset shift
Speaker 1: work to say, you know, I expect there to be
Speaker 1: accountability for results. I don't think this is a problem
Speaker 1: that's intractable. Obviously, we've got a housing crisis at a
Speaker 1: national level, yes, and even within that context, there are
Speaker 1: shades of doing better and worse right with the hand
Speaker 1: that you're dealt. And so not to say we shouldn't
Speaker 1: push on the structural barriers that exist, Yes, absolutely we should.
Speaker 1: And you and I both know that in a community
Speaker 1: like Los Angeles, there's just been a big influx of
Speaker 1: resources from the state from a local ballot measure, multiple
Speaker 1: local ballot measures, right, And so how are we thinking
Speaker 1: about the impact that that has on people's experience of
Speaker 1: housing instability and crisis on our experience of living in neighborhoods,
Speaker 1: and you know, starting to get curious about how we
Speaker 1: would know if we were making progress towards and then
Speaker 1: homelessness where you live. I think it is a good
Speaker 1: first step. This is a good segue because I'm I'm
Speaker 1: hearing you as a listener, not just as the host
Speaker 1: of this show. And I want to be a part
Speaker 1: of this community solution. To use your organization's name. I have,
Speaker 1: you know, been saddened by and frustrated by and feeling
Speaker 1: impotent about this perceived an actual level of increased you know,
Speaker 1: housing crisis and the failures of our society in so
Speaker 1: many ways to have people living on the streets as
Speaker 1: one example, What are some ways that I can get
Speaker 1: more involved, that I can bring to bear, that I
Speaker 1: can plug in in some way I want to help
Speaker 1: share some of this responsibility that you talked about, shared accountability,
Speaker 1: these shared goals. Where can I be a part of that?
Speaker 1: Such a good question. So I think three things come
Speaker 1: to mind. The first is just to start to understand
Speaker 1: homelessness as a solvable problem that's about systems and not
Speaker 1: about the failing of individual people. I think a lot
Speaker 1: of us don't know anybody firsthand who is currently experiencing
Speaker 1: homelessness or has experienced homelessness recently, and so it becomes
Speaker 1: a dehumanizing story. Right that person who is almost over there.
Speaker 1: I don't know anything about them. They may not look
Speaker 1: like me. It's hard for me to see myself in them,
Speaker 1: and so I start to view the matter a move
Speaker 1: right or to center them in the narrative about homelessness
Speaker 1: in my community. Oh, those people and their substance use,
Speaker 1: or they're out of town or nature or whatever. Right
Speaker 1: there are neighbors, and I think that there's something really
Speaker 1: powerful in leaning into that discomfort, though may make you
Speaker 1: feel impotent, as you were saying, of viewing those as
Speaker 1: people deserving of a home, not about fixing the people,
Speaker 1: about fixing the system. So that mindset you have feels crucial. First,
Speaker 1: The second thing for me is I mentioned those continuums
Speaker 1: of care won key term CEO c S. Type in
Speaker 1: your your community name and CEOC into a web browser.
Speaker 1: You'll figure out some information about local folks doing the work.
Speaker 1: And I think I would encourage for people to get
Speaker 1: connected to those entities. It's a little bit of a
Speaker 1: learning curve, I know, but you know, you can sort
Speaker 1: of choose how you want to approach it and get connected.
Speaker 1: For folks who want to feel more involved in direct,
Speaker 1: tangible material support, tons of opportunities, I think, especially as
Speaker 1: fingers crossed the pandemic starts to wane wherever you live,
Speaker 1: for folks to show up and start to get face time,
Speaker 1: to humanize some of the folks experiencing housing crisis in
Speaker 1: their neighborhood with their community. And then for people who
Speaker 1: are maybe looking for a little bit more of that
Speaker 1: system angle or orientation, I'd invite you to to start
Speaker 1: to get some of those committees or decision making groups right, So,
Speaker 1: how are we deciding policies on how the money gets
Speaker 1: spent or how we're measuring success. A lot of those
Speaker 1: have participatory processes where they're really excited to have people
Speaker 1: show up. And just like so much of participatory democracy,
Speaker 1: the people who tend to show up often I think
Speaker 1: aren't maybe are the listeners of your program, And so
Speaker 1: I'd encourage more people to start to get involved and
Speaker 1: tap in. And then maybe the third thing that I'll
Speaker 1: say is that you know, I mentioned these themes of
Speaker 1: data and accountability and shared aim. You know, I mentioned
Speaker 1: that Menino mayor survey and how few mayors across the
Speaker 1: country said they view success on homelessness as tied to
Speaker 1: reductions and homelessness, which is bananas. Right. If I ask
Speaker 1: anybody you know, or my parents or whoever, how should
Speaker 1: we think about if we're doing better on homelessness? One
Speaker 1: of the first things people say is we should have
Speaker 1: fewer people who are homeless. How is that arrow trending? Right?
Speaker 1: And we've got to be able to see that more
Speaker 1: than just annually, and we have to be able to
Speaker 1: see that in a way that passes the sniff test
Speaker 1: for the people doing the work on the ground across
Speaker 1: a variety of communities, right, And so start to ask
Speaker 1: for that accountability for that line of state into the
Speaker 1: data where you live. I think we should start to
Speaker 1: feel in the same way that if I if tomorrow
Speaker 1: they started to tell me we can't tell you how
Speaker 1: many COVID cases there are you know a county, I'd
Speaker 1: be like, what do you mean? I mean, who do
Speaker 1: I call? Right? We should start to expect that, right, like,
Speaker 1: let us raise the bar on what we expect um
Speaker 1: and again not just seeing the data, but understanding which
Speaker 1: way is headed and why um and start to unpack
Speaker 1: and have those conversations. There's always a set of elections
Speaker 1: going on, and mayor is a very important one. And
Speaker 1: so just to have in mind a question to ask
Speaker 1: your mayor or the people who want to who want
Speaker 1: that job, you know, what's your definition of success? How
Speaker 1: will you know if your plan to you know, reduce
Speaker 1: homelessness is working and if they are, I don't know.
Speaker 1: And let me tell you another red flag too, right,
Speaker 1: which is if you live in California, or in Washington State,
Speaker 1: or in somewhere where of homelessness is visible. I think
Speaker 1: a real risk to us having a scoreboard that's about
Speaker 1: how visible homelessness is is that we create a big
Speaker 1: old set a warehouses and we shove people into that.
Speaker 1: Not because that's the ultimate end state goal, but if
Speaker 1: we create a set of incentives, if we say to
Speaker 1: our mayor, the measure of your success on homelessness is
Speaker 1: the number of tents on my block. Think about the
Speaker 1: easiest way to shrink the number of tents on my block.
Speaker 1: It's a lot easier to move people out of sight
Speaker 1: and out of mind than it is to solve some
Speaker 1: of the underlying structural challenges that we face in our
Speaker 1: communities that are leading to the homelessness crisis. And so
Speaker 1: I think, more than anything, I think I want to
Speaker 1: also say, if you're going to engage with elected folks,
Speaker 1: be sure to ask not just what's the plan for
Speaker 1: the encampments or of folks sleeping on my block? Not
Speaker 1: to say that isn't important. I know for a lot
Speaker 1: of different reasons that matters to people. But that second
Speaker 1: question of how will I know that the data is
Speaker 1: showing those folks are in safe and stable, permanent housing
Speaker 1: and not just in a homeless shelter that we've built
Speaker 1: last week down the street, because that's not really success.
Speaker 1: That's a step in the direction, for sure, and especially
Speaker 1: if that homeless shelter is high quality and is a
Speaker 1: tune to people's needs and experiences. Sure, by all means right,
Speaker 1: but I think we have examples of major cities on
Speaker 1: the East Coast or and other leather places where they've
Speaker 1: invested really heavily in a really big and expensive shelter system,
Speaker 1: and while it definitely meets some of people's immediate humanitarian needs,
Speaker 1: it's a bit of a band aid, right, And and
Speaker 1: so how do we avoid creating a set of incentives
Speaker 1: that push people to invest more and more in just
Speaker 1: bigger band aids, right, because that makes them look good.
Speaker 1: So I think that's important catch forty to to stay
Speaker 1: on top of. I'm glad you pointed that out. Thank you.
Speaker 1: We call this show How to Citizen. We consider citizen
Speaker 1: as a verb, not a legal status, and you know
Speaker 1: it means all kinds of things to Our definition of
Speaker 1: citizen is like premised on these four basic blocks. But
Speaker 1: you got your four blocks, right, your four elements of
Speaker 1: built for zero. We have ours for How to Citizen,
Speaker 1: which involved number one showing up and participating. Number two,
Speaker 1: you know, investing in relationships with yourself, with others and
Speaker 1: with the planet around you. Number three understanding power. That
Speaker 1: is something we all have and it shows up in
Speaker 1: more than just votes and dollars. There's a lot of
Speaker 1: different ways to exercise it and generate it. And number
Speaker 1: four that we use all these to benefit our collective selves,
Speaker 1: not just our individual cells. So as you hear that overview,
Speaker 1: and you've you know, done some homework, I hear too.
Speaker 1: I appreciate that you know what the show is about
Speaker 1: what does in the context of you're doing for work,
Speaker 1: what does it mean to citizen? What does citizen as
Speaker 1: a verb mean to you? I love those four building
Speaker 1: blocks that you have. What resonates most with me is
Speaker 1: the citizen is to feel responsible for the circumstances of
Speaker 1: your community. Right. So it's a bit of a blend
Speaker 1: of showing up and investing, but also benefiting the collective
Speaker 1: as you've had in there. And to me, I think
Speaker 1: when we bring it to the issue of homelessness, viewing
Speaker 1: yourself as playing a role in your community beyond just
Speaker 1: like are you nice to people? Are you humanizing? Do
Speaker 1: you smile? Yes? Does matter? But more broadly, at the
Speaker 1: system level, are you starting to think about showing up
Speaker 1: in that space as having a role to play, um
Speaker 1: as feeling part of the collective ownership? Right? I think
Speaker 1: more than anything, one of the things that happens when
Speaker 1: you start to humanize people, to make eye contact, to
Speaker 1: not look away, to ask people their names, to see
Speaker 1: how they're doing, to view them as your neighbors, is
Speaker 1: it unlocks a sense of responsibility, right, um, And and
Speaker 1: I think that we are we are accepting of the
Speaker 1: conditions in our communities. Right to me, how the citizen
Speaker 1: also means to feel responsible for the status quo where
Speaker 1: you live and to feel responsible for making it better. Right,
Speaker 1: And like you said, that might be about exercising your
Speaker 1: power in terms of elections or money. It might be
Speaker 1: about exercising other things. Right, Um, I don't know. But
Speaker 1: what I do know is that if I accept, If
Speaker 1: if I walk through skid row in Los Angeles and
Speaker 1: I accept that it is what it is, and I
Speaker 1: don't know what to do about it, it's out of
Speaker 1: my hands or it's untractable, it can't be solved. It's
Speaker 1: the easiest way. Don't let myself off the hook. And
Speaker 1: I think more than anything else, I asked people not
Speaker 1: to do that. Right, almost this is solvable. Look around.
Speaker 1: If your community is not ending homelessness, try and figure
Speaker 1: out what you can do to change that. And so,
Speaker 1: like I said, I think folks can go to our
Speaker 1: website and figure out how to get involved. See if
Speaker 1: their community is part of Built for Zero And if not,
Speaker 1: what's the website? What's the website? Say at Community dot Solutions,
Speaker 1: how did you get that? How did you get that
Speaker 1: cool domain name? That's a domain name? I'm the tech
Speaker 1: and data guy. Man, that's what we do. Very cool.
Speaker 1: Speaking of you being a tech and data guy, you've
Speaker 1: shared a lot about the programs and about your approach
Speaker 1: and some of the victories and some of the challenges.
Speaker 1: Why are you working here? What what's led you to
Speaker 1: spend you know, your full time work efforts in this
Speaker 1: organization working on this problem and these solutions More importantly, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I appreciate that reframe. So I started at Community Solutions
Speaker 1: a little over seven years ago, which is wild. Um.
Speaker 1: It was one of the first handful of jobs I
Speaker 1: had out of college. My academic background is in international development,
Speaker 1: and then I went back to school there in my
Speaker 1: career and double down on statistics. And the reason I
Speaker 1: did that, and the reason I stick around at Community
Speaker 1: Solutions is because what I learned in those first handful
Speaker 1: years in my job was that we've gotten pretty good,
Speaker 1: especially around issues like housing and homelessness, at helping one
Speaker 1: person or one family, Right, something really compelling about homelessness
Speaker 1: as an issue area. So there's there's a really obvious
Speaker 1: we don't need to go to the lab and come
Speaker 1: up with the cure for homelessness, right, It's not like,
Speaker 1: you know, biomedical research is needed here, right. The cure
Speaker 1: for homelessness is housing, period And what we know is
Speaker 1: that we have a really robust set of evidence informed
Speaker 1: social work practices, housing models, and housing stability and support
Speaker 1: models that say, and for folks who don't know that,
Speaker 1: there's this great term called housing first, and there's a
Speaker 1: whole bunch of associated research and models for how you
Speaker 1: successfully implement housing first to help one household, one family,
Speaker 1: run one excellent program. So okay, we know how to
Speaker 1: help one person, one family, one run one excellent program,
Speaker 1: and yet the sum total of all of that activity
Speaker 1: isn't resulting in the outcome we care about. And that
Speaker 1: is a really interesting and thorny puzzle. It's what drives
Speaker 1: me out of bad every morning is to say, how
Speaker 1: can I help contribute to us unlocking that thorny puzzle.
Speaker 1: But what also gives me a lot of hope is
Speaker 1: because we know how to help those one family and
Speaker 1: one person how to run one excellent program project. These
Speaker 1: feels like an easy place for us, easy air quotes,
Speaker 1: place for us to start to take a stand on
Speaker 1: raising the floor on what we are willing to accept
Speaker 1: as a society and a culture in terms of poverty
Speaker 1: and minimum standards of quality of life in our communities.
Speaker 1: I think about the fact that we have collectively decided
Speaker 1: that if you get hit by a bus and you
Speaker 1: don't have insurance, we give you healthcare. And we've decided
Speaker 1: collectively that if you can't afford something to eat, you
Speaker 1: can qualify for a foods type and or about of it.
Speaker 1: These are human rights. And when you look at that,
Speaker 1: you know some of your listeners may be sort of
Speaker 1: familiar with Maslow's hierarchy of needs, a long y term
Speaker 1: for what's the bread and butter stuff you need to
Speaker 1: stay alive as a human being? Right? Housing is on
Speaker 1: that bottom level. It's the base of the pyramid. It
Speaker 1: is a thing that we know people need, and yet
Speaker 1: somehow along the way we are not yet out of
Speaker 1: place where all the people eligible for housing assistants get
Speaker 1: it right. And so there's a resource constrained angle, but
Speaker 1: there's also a set of system decisions and designs, and
Speaker 1: I'm excited to get to work on those things. Where
Speaker 1: did you grow up? So I am the child of refugees,
Speaker 1: I'm an immigrant. I grew up across Toronto, Washington, d C.
Speaker 1: And then throughout my childhood increasingly more upscale suburbs of Washington,
Speaker 1: d C. So we started out in Congress Heights. Back
Speaker 1: when I was a little kid, we lived in public housing.
Speaker 1: We had the opportunity to sort of move up that
Speaker 1: socioeconomic ladder. I got to see it firsthand. I spent
Speaker 1: a lot of my childhood formative years either living in
Speaker 1: subsidized housing benefiting from some of these public programs, or
Speaker 1: turning around and having folks live with us. Uh So
Speaker 1: sort of that chain migration story of having relatives or
Speaker 1: even community members who am not related to sharing space
Speaker 1: in our home. And so what feels true to me
Speaker 1: is that there's a really crucial linkage here in terms
Speaker 1: of housing and opportunity, right, those things are linked, and
Speaker 1: I think sometimes we missed that. And so as we're
Speaker 1: having these conversations about what kind of country you want
Speaker 1: to be or what kind of person I want to
Speaker 1: be in my community, I think this issue area I
Speaker 1: really feels like it hits close to home and it
Speaker 1: moves me. And then in terms of the data and
Speaker 1: tech side of things, I think, after having worked in
Speaker 1: this space for a couple of years, what felt true
Speaker 1: is that people were in the field, we're experiencing data
Speaker 1: and tech as a barrier to their work and not
Speaker 1: as a catalyst. And that felt bananas, right, And I
Speaker 1: have this this quote actually that it sits on a
Speaker 1: sticky note on my monitor. I'd love to to share
Speaker 1: it with you, which is from somebody who's a frontline worker,
Speaker 1: and they said, I've seen how our data and tech
Speaker 1: systems contribute to people spending time on the streets and
Speaker 1: being more likely to die on the streets, and it's unacceptable.
Speaker 1: And we know we have data that says if you're
Speaker 1: experiencing homelessness, you're life expectancy decreases by about seventeen years
Speaker 1: on average. And that's not. That's real, right, that's real harm.
Speaker 1: It's not I'm having fun sleeping on the beach stuff, right.
Speaker 1: And so once you start to see that and you
Speaker 1: think about, you know, what does it mean to be
Speaker 1: doing international development work? But then you come home and
Speaker 1: there's an encampment on your block. Who's got that ball?
Speaker 1: Who's doing domestic development work? And lots of people are
Speaker 1: doing it. But I think we have an opportunity to
Speaker 1: shift what that looks like. Thank you for letting me
Speaker 1: in there. That it you make sense doing what you're
Speaker 1: doing to me who just met you, and you snuck
Speaker 1: a pun in there bringing it all home. I caught
Speaker 1: that that was good, And I think you know, it's
Speaker 1: something you started off with a while ago about seeing
Speaker 1: folks in a housing crisis, seeing people who are unhoused
Speaker 1: as people and as our neighbors, and and it feels
Speaker 1: like you know something that you got to experience and
Speaker 1: be a part of as a child yourself. You're taking
Speaker 1: people in, You're being taken into something like we're all connected,
Speaker 1: we're all family here to some degree, and take an ownership,
Speaker 1: you know, for our communities. It's it's our responsibility the
Speaker 1: way things are, and it's also our responsibility to change
Speaker 1: the way things are. And if we can, you know,
Speaker 1: say we more on both sides of those as opposed
Speaker 1: to they or you or just anybody but me. That
Speaker 1: sense the ownership, I hope, is more empowering. You've left
Speaker 1: me feeling more empowered. I'm going to be contemplating, you know,
Speaker 1: housing as a is a human right and as that
Speaker 1: base level of Maslow's hierarchy, as well as my unhoused
Speaker 1: you know, neighbors as neighbors, and I definitely have some
Speaker 1: questions for these people trying to represent us in the
Speaker 1: various halls of a form of political power. Because you've
Speaker 1: raised the floor, I think on what we should expect
Speaker 1: from ourselves, and for that, I thank you for citizening
Speaker 1: so much. Thank you wonderful to be in conversation with you,
Speaker 1: and I feel excited for us to continue to build
Speaker 1: the movement across the country that believes some lessness is solvable.
Speaker 1: We're doing it, yo. That was That was a dope conversation.
Speaker 1: Like Ura said, homelessness is solvable, and we're doing it,
Speaker 1: so true to form for our podcast. Here, here's some
Speaker 1: actions you can take to be part of the solution.
Speaker 1: As always, we offer this in three levels. First, try
Speaker 1: these personal reflections. This is something you can do all
Speaker 1: by yourself. I prefer if you try to do this
Speaker 1: out loud though. These are inspired by Ross's recommendations, and
Speaker 1: I just want you to repeat after me. I believe
Speaker 1: that homelessness is solvable. I understand that we must fix systems,
Speaker 1: not people. I consider people experiencing homelessness in my community
Speaker 1: to be my neighbors. Guys. It play it back. If
Speaker 1: you need to look at yourself in the mirror, think
Speaker 1: it out loud inside your head, but really I want
Speaker 1: you to try to say those things and believe them,
Speaker 1: because so often we behave as if we think the
Speaker 1: opposite is true. And I think if we start saying
Speaker 1: something different to ourselves, we might show up differently in
Speaker 1: the world. All right, here's the next level. Let's get
Speaker 1: more in full formed in a way that continues to
Speaker 1: humanize these neighbors of ours. There's a really cool website
Speaker 1: an organization called Invisible People. You can find them at
Speaker 1: Invisible people dot tv, and they use storytelling, education, news
Speaker 1: and activism to change the narrative on homelessness. These videos
Speaker 1: are really well done, really compelling, and they tell a
Speaker 1: whole story most of us don't see if we just
Speaker 1: rely on the news and social media. From their site,
Speaker 1: you can find links to their Facebook, their Instagram, their Twitter,
Speaker 1: and their YouTube, so there's no excuse not to find
Speaker 1: them because they're they're everywhere. After watching two videos myself,
Speaker 1: I became a supporter on their Patreon. It's that good.
Speaker 1: So check that out and just adjust the information sources
Speaker 1: you rely on to tell you the story of a
Speaker 1: house people, and this is one that put to that
Speaker 1: narrative in the hands of folks much closer to that experience. Finally,
Speaker 1: our level three publicly participate. What single action have we
Speaker 1: come up with feed to do on this one? Well,
Speaker 1: in this case, we're outsourcing. We're leveraging existing efforts through
Speaker 1: arosis organization Community Solutions. They set up a whole page
Speaker 1: literally devoted to citizen action. Like I'm not kidding. You
Speaker 1: go to this page and there's a big old icon
Speaker 1: that says for citizens. And they don't mean people with documentation,
Speaker 1: they mean people like you if you're listening to this podcast.
Speaker 1: They built a whole page for you. We're partners and
Speaker 1: didn't even know it. So here's the website, Community dot
Speaker 1: Solutions slash take dash as an hyphen action, Community dot
Speaker 1: Solutions slash take dash Action. It's a whole playbook to
Speaker 1: learn more, to connect locally to those continuums of k
Speaker 1: are that we're all a part of, and to hold
Speaker 1: our communities and our elected officials accountable for hending ending homelessness. Now, look,
Speaker 1: we got links to all this and more as usual
Speaker 1: at how to citizen dot com and in the episode
Speaker 1: show notes of whatever software you're using to listen to
Speaker 1: this podcast. Right now. Follow us on Instagram at how
Speaker 1: the Citizen. Tag us in your posts, use the hashtag
Speaker 1: how the Citizen. And here's a special ask because I
Speaker 1: didn't know I was going to get a chance to
Speaker 1: talk to you again before we dropped another full season
Speaker 1: on you. Season four. We're thinking about it, we're figuring
Speaker 1: it out, and I want your thoughts. So if you're
Speaker 1: if you're on the Instagram, you d m U, s
Speaker 1: apt message tag, whatever the lingo. It's always changing, get
Speaker 1: at us on Instagram, or if you want a more thorough,
Speaker 1: direct and less public line, email comments at how to
Speaker 1: citizen dot com. We still have that channel open, and
Speaker 1: I would particularly be interested to know who you want
Speaker 1: us to bring on the show, what types of topics
Speaker 1: do you want us to engage in, and how else
Speaker 1: might you want to connect with each other and with
Speaker 1: the show, Because I gotta be real, I missed making
Speaker 1: this show which on Zoom like we did in the
Speaker 1: first season. It was a little lower tech in some ways,
Speaker 1: a little lower sound design, but it was nice to
Speaker 1: be there within the room with you in some ways.
Speaker 1: So whether it's you know, live during recordings or with
Speaker 1: some kind of online forum, let me know how you
Speaker 1: might want to connect with me, with the show and
Speaker 1: with each other more as we figure out what to
Speaker 1: do for season four. Look at that poet. Didn't even
Speaker 1: know it alright, Chell How the Citizen with Barrett Tune
Speaker 1: Day is a production of I Heart Radio podcast. Our
Speaker 1: executive producers are Me Barrattum Day Thurston, and Elizabeth Stewart.
Speaker 1: Original music by Andrew Eapen, with additional original music for
Speaker 1: season three from Andrew Clauses. This episode was produced and
Speaker 1: edited by Max Williams and special thanks to Joel Smith
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio, Mischa Yusuf and Samika Adams from Dusklike Productions.
Speaker 1: Thanks y'all, m m HM