The Homeless Chronicles. Part 17

This week we covered the status of care and services for the homeless in Orange County by examining the website of the Homeless Management Information System or HMIS. The website is mostly a collection of 8 separate reports with little if any attempt to provide any summary, synthesis or even remote association of one report with another. It looks like something a first year college student would put together for a more experienced person to then develop appropriate narrative. Despite this major flaw, there is information here and with a lot of time and effort a picture can be painted.

BASIC INFO

Here are the major basic facts -

• As of November 2019 there were 11,675 “unduplicated active clients” in the system and the system gets input from 49 “participating agencies”.
• Also as of November 2019 there are 10 “active clients by project type”, with 42% of the projects serving unsheltered people and 58% serving sheltered people. The two major projects are Emergency Shelter (3,462 clients) and Permanent Supportive Housing (2,536 clients).
• The Statistics report (quoted from above) is the only report that is actually up to date. Some reports go back more than a year
• Based on the HMIS Data Quality Report Card not a single project has 100% complete data, and in more than 20% of the cases the completeness is less than 90%. Data on “timeliness” is measured, but not revealed, suggesting that the data on clients, where it exists, may be out of date.
• More questions about the data are raised when you compare reports. According to the Statistics report, in 2019 the County had 6,804 active sheltered clients (58%). According to the Point-in-Time Report on Jan 25, 2019 there were 2,899 sheltered people. Since the PIT report theoretically incorporated all the sheltered people from the Statistics report, differences in numbers are troublesome. If there are 6,804 sheltered active clients in the system, how does the PIT only provide data on 2,899 of them?

HOUSING

Looking at housing, we find that -

• According to the Housing Inventory Count, the total housing stock remained at about 6,000 beds from 2015 to 2019. Though the total remains stable, there were big increases in Emergency Shelter beds (up 117%) and corresponding decreases in Transitional Housing beds (down 43%) and Rapid Re-Housing beds (down 26%). Increasing emergency beds at the expense of transitional housing and rapid re-housing works against long-time solutions, though it does let Politicians give the impression that something is being done.
• According to the CoC Board Reports, 100% of the Permanent Supportive Housing beds were filled, but Transitional Housing was around 80% and Emergency Shelter beds are highly variable, from 60% to 110%.
• According to the CoC Board Reports from April 2018 to March 2019 the number of “households waiting for housing on prioritization” varied a lot, from 708 (Oct 2018) to 1,243 (Dec 2018). Bear in mind the data here refers to “households” without any more information about how many adults and children there are waiting. Assuming an average household size of 3 people, the numbers of individuals waiting ranged from 2,000 to 4,000.
  

EFFECTIVENESS

Going beyond these basic facts about the system itself, there is some data about the effectiveness of the system. Let’s see what that data indicates –

• According to the System Performance report in 2017 4,629 were homeless for the first time. In 2018 it was 5,342. That’s an increase of 25%. That’s not good. ###li
• According to the System Performance report the average length of being homeless was 277 days in 2017, then 466 in 2018: a 68% increase! That’s awful.
• According to the System Performance report, using a 2-year follow-up, the “return to homelessness” percentages for the various project programs as of September 2018 averaged 13% with a range from 10% to 23%. Those are good numbers.
• According to the CoC Board Reports people who stayed in the County’s programs showed increased “total income” while people who left did not. That’s good, but they didn’t show increases in “earned income” which means that their use of tax payer supported benefits increased. The better solution to homelessness involves more and better jobs, not more and higher government supported benefits.
• According to the CoC Board Reports “successful exit trends” from April 2018 to March 2019 were only 20% for Emergency Shelter and Street Outreach, 60% for Transitional Housing and 80% to 100% for Rapid Re-Housing and Homeless Prevention. Trends showed no progress in 4 of the 5 projects, and decreasing trends in Street Outreach.

WHAT’S NOT MEASURED

More important than anything the County looks at is what the County doesn’t look at. Here’s some examples of major dependent variables that are NOT measured -

• Are the rates of criminal activity decreasing?
• Are the psychiatric symptoms going down?
• Are their physical conditions improving?
• Are their visits to emergency rooms going down?
• Are they using fewer drugs or lower dosages?
• Are they being assaulted/victimized less often?

About the Author

Dr. Jim Gardner is the former Mayor of Lake Forest. A Clinical Psychologist, he is a former University Professor and Department Head. He authored several reports about homelessness.