Guest blog by Charlie Albanese, Michael Burns, Corrinda Crossdale, Wanda Cooper, Linda Kingsley, Tammy Mayberry, Gabe Person, John Oster
Our group focused on homelessness, specifically street homelessness. Our public value statement is: “We will tackle street homelessness, particularly homeless individuals residing in City encampments identified by GIS, because everyone in the community should be treated with dignity and respect by having their basic living needs met.”
We have made significant progress, primarily focusing on the following entry points:
- Formalize community outreach to improve coordination among available services
- The presence of encampments and the reduced quality of life camps bring to those living in the encampment and those working and living nearby
- Many shelters lack the resources or capacity to provide necessary services for higher needs individuals and some of our most vulnerable populations
Specifically, we have done the following:
- From January to mid-February – The team held weekly engagement via virtual sessions with Bloomberg-Harvard (BH) faculty and facilitation resources, followed by weekly Team meetings to discuss current assignments and define action items.
- Week of February 12th – We engaged with colleagues in NYC from nine other cities, supported by BH faculty, with focus on refining the public value statement, entry points, and next steps
- Mid-February to Mid-April – We held bi-weekly Team meetings focused on formalizing Homeless Outreach Protocol and conducting a Data Equity Audit. We have created a draft Homeless Outreach Protocol, and began drafting a report and defining action items for the Data Equity Audit.
This program helped us build capacity internally and with respect to our ability to frame problems and solutions. We brought together a multi-disciplinary team of 8 and team of 40, and proved that non-profits, police departments, and local governments can work together and make tangible progress on entrenched issues. The course helped us better describe and identify what we were trying to do, and take the experience of others to inform our process. The independent learning process was an effective approach, and we appreciate amount of time that we received from the BH team.
Case studies such as Rockford showed that the issue of street homelessness could be successfully addressed, and provided a template for how to achieve that. Our peers in the program taught us that we all face difficult challenges in one form or another, despite differing sizes of government and constituencies, political affiliations, and geographies. We found that collaboration and authorization are key to problem solving and tackling problems in an effective way, but identifying that does not necessarily mean that the work gets easier. We have a better roadmap, but the work will continue to be hard, and necessary.
This approach changed the way we tackle problems in a number of ways, largely by changing how we break down problems and how we scale and pursue solutions. We will not be as afraid to try working with people from differing constituencies and with differing viewpoints. We have and will continue to implement or use the tools provided to us by BH staff, such as PDIA, fishbone, iteration, and identifying authorizers. Patience has been key, and it will continue to be. This program has shown us that we should have less fear of starting somewhere. Our experience with BH in breaking problems down into smaller component areas, finding entry points, and recruiting buy-in has been enlightening. Iterate, iterate, iterate.
We have used the tools and approaches from this class to develop the homeless and encampment outreach protocol that we are putting into place in the community. We are also using engagement tactics to deal with challenging situations including with local residents, many of whom have the same goal as us, but believe that we need to get there via different methods. We are also using the tools used in this class to develop best practices and funding strategies for the City’s HUD funding that supports services and housing for homeless persons, including the annual allocation of Emergency Solutions Grants (ESG) funds and the recent allocation of HOME-American Rescue Plan (HOME-ARP) funds. We are utilizing everything learned within the reading materials and through class sessions to help inform how we present ourselves, the data, our approach, team structures, etc.
If we could give future PDIA-ers any advice, we would say, “Find somewhere to start, and iterate.” Understand that you do not need to have perfect solutions on day one (or day 180). Lean on those in your community that are knowledgeable and that dedicate themselves to the issue at hand, seek out those further away that have experience, and use the tools you know possess to make the first step.
This is part of a blog series written by city leaders who participated in the Bloomberg Harvard City Leadership Initiative cross-boundary collaboration track during 2023.