Fierce commitment to data: how Bakersfield reached homelessness functional zero
Unlike San Jose and its flawed reliance on metrics-free orthodoxies like Housing First, some cities have let clear-eyed review of metrics inform their homelessness strategies and programs. And to good effect; Bakersfield uses multi-layered data analysis & technologies to become the only big CA city to solve its homelessness crisis. Community Solutions explains.
You cannot solve a problem that you don’t understand. In order to measurably end homelessness, communities need real-time, person-specific data. Traditionally, an understanding of the issue of homelessness in a community has been limited to an annual estimate of people experiencing homelessness, called the point-in-time count. This is an aggregate number that provides an estimate of people experiencing homelessness on a single night, but does not include the names or needs of the people who make up that number.
Communities in Built for Zero develop by-name lists, which provide real-time insights into everyone experiencing homelessness by name. This enables communities to triage that individual’s needs, understand if their investments and activities are driving homelessness down and test and innovate ideas that will move people out of homelessness faster.
By September 2017, the {Kern County} team had created a system that ensured quality data on every person experiencing chronic homelessness in their community. This data enabled them to understand who was moving out of homelessness, who was entering into it, and who was remaining on the list. Reaching this data reliability threshold signaled that data management practices were robust and efficient, and that data is being tracked in a consistent manner.
Once the team had reliable by-name, real-time data, they looked at how they could improve their homeless response system from a user-centered perspective.
For example, their system had a bottleneck between the length of time a client was matched to a housing resource to the time they located a unit to move into. Once this was highlighted as a challenge to be addressed, the team submitted a proposal for an investment from Kaiser Permanente, a core partner of Built for Zero, to help fill a resource gap to help them on their journey to functional zero.
This proposal was granted in July 2019, allowing them to fund a new Housing Locator role to locate housing units and increase case manager capacity. This new employee utilized software called Padmission, which is a program like Zillow for rental units in a homelessness system, adding in notes about landlords that would work with chronic clients which case workers could reference when working with clients.
This support, along with valuable training from Kaiser Permanent, re-invigorated the community’s drive to reach functional zero for chronic homelessness.
With a multi-agency command center team established and real-time, by-name data of all people experiencing chronic homelessness in hand, Bakersfield and Kern County set about testing change ideas in order to better target resources and continue improving their system.
Read the whole thing here.
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