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“We have a plan to get every homeless family off the streets within five years. We’ve already moved hundreds of families back into society and into homes.” Wow.

1123581321 8y ago
You have to start somewhere. A local, wealthy entrepreneur has the same goal, and after about a decade of work coordinating public and private orgs and developing a unified case management system, our city of ~140k has functionally zero homeless because they are all getting help. Replication of this model is underway in other cities. The hard work of scheduling meetings and getting multi-org agreement “scales” if it’s being effectively managed by locals in each city, and of course the software is easily distributed.
- janpieterz 8y ago
  Any more info you can share on this? Very curious what the difference is compared to the usual approach, see how it could apply in different places (here in NL).
  - 1123581321 8y ago
    Sure, here’s a very recent article (but the effects of this approach have been accumulating for awhile.) http://www.rrstar.com/news/20180608/rockford-gets-attention-for-efforts-to-reduce-homelessness http://www.rrstar.com/news/20180608/rockford-gets-attention-... Here’s the software referenced: https://www.mpowr.com/focus-areas/community https://www.mpowr.com/focus-areas/community It’s a SaaS, but as you can see, the hard part isn’t the app development; it’s getting all the government departments and charities talking and agreeing to automatically coordinate via software. Our city is bad at a lot of things, so I’m a bit proud we’ve actually accomplished something good that we are able to export. :) The usual approach is to start a new case at each org which duplicates the same kind of assistance, leaving less for others and making it harder to steadily advance someone towards receiving the treatment or rehabilitation they need since they’ll bounce from place to place. When communication between agencies does happen, it generates too much paperwork and decision-making is inconsistent, time-consuming and less effective because the staff might not be up to date on the solutions or money available to treat an individual’s specific problems. Software, along with a more collaborative mindset, helps all of this.
cookingrobot 8y ago
The “wow” might have come across as being sarcastic but it wasn’t intended that way. I’m honest impressed with this effort.

1123581321 8y ago

You have to start somewhere. A local, wealthy entrepreneur has the same goal, and after about a decade of work coordinating public and private orgs and developing a unified case management system, our city of ~140k has functionally zero homeless because they are all getting help. Replication of this model is underway in other cities. The hard work of scheduling meetings and getting multi-org agreement “scales” if it’s being effectively managed by locals in each city, and of course the software is easily distributed.

janpieterz 8y ago
Any more info you can share on this? Very curious what the difference is compared to the usual approach, see how it could apply in different places (here in NL).
- 1123581321 8y ago
  Sure, here’s a very recent article (but the effects of this approach have been accumulating for awhile.) http://www.rrstar.com/news/20180608/rockford-gets-attention-for-efforts-to-reduce-homelessness http://www.rrstar.com/news/20180608/rockford-gets-attention-... Here’s the software referenced: https://www.mpowr.com/focus-areas/community https://www.mpowr.com/focus-areas/community It’s a SaaS, but as you can see, the hard part isn’t the app development; it’s getting all the government departments and charities talking and agreeing to automatically coordinate via software. Our city is bad at a lot of things, so I’m a bit proud we’ve actually accomplished something good that we are able to export. :) The usual approach is to start a new case at each org which duplicates the same kind of assistance, leaving less for others and making it harder to steadily advance someone towards receiving the treatment or rehabilitation they need since they’ll bounce from place to place. When communication between agencies does happen, it generates too much paperwork and decision-making is inconsistent, time-consuming and less effective because the staff might not be up to date on the solutions or money available to treat an individual’s specific problems. Software, along with a more collaborative mindset, helps all of this.

cookingrobot 8y ago

The “wow” might have come across as being sarcastic but it wasn’t intended that way. I’m honest impressed with this effort.