Myth Series #2: #REALFACTONHOMELESSNESS
Our friends at the National Coalition for the Homeless launched the Housing NOW! 2020 campaign, a national call to action that is designed to re-energize local, state, and national advocates to come together to demand a significant increase in federal funding that keeps pace with rising local needs. It is based on the premise that housing is a human right and homelessness is NOT inevitable.
The following myths are part of our Myths of Homelessness series to help expose #RealFactsonHomelessness related to housing, homelessness, and funding.
Myth: Coordinated Assessments accurately identify which people experiencing homelessness need housing and services the most.
Facts: Many communities have adopted the used of the Vulnerability Index and Service Prioritization Decisions Assistance Tool (VI-SPDAT) to assess and prioritize families and individuals for limited housing and service resources. However, the VI-SPDAT has never been validated as an evidence-based practice to be used for this purpose. Among the tool’s faults are that it is often administered by volunteers without clinical training to make such assessments, it relies on self-reported information that is often inaccurate, it utilizes a one-time assessment to make critical decisions rather than objective information, and it tends to prioritize physical challenges over mental health challenges. In addition, there is increasing indications that the tool has implicit racial and ethnic bias that discriminate against persons of color.
Myth: Rapid Re-Housing (RRH) is a model of housing that works for everyone and ensures that people will be housed long-term.
Facts:
Rapid Re-Housing (RRH) is a voucher program providing short-term to medium-term rental assistance for up to 2 years. While RRH can be an effective housing strategy in communities with available affordable housing supply to resolve homelessness quickly for individuals and families that have immediate housing needs which can be assisted with time-limited, shortterm, and limited supportive services, or as a bridge to long-term affordable housing or subsidy. However, over-reliance on RRH as a one-size-fits-all approach fails to honor and address the unique needs of large numbers of individuals and families experiencing homelessness who need longer-term solutions and are living with greater service needs, including people who are living with a disabling condition or have no opportunities for economic mobility to allow them take on the full rent burden of average rents in their communities. For these families or individuals, RRH often creates a cliff effect and results in people returning to homelessness. Providing RRH without a strategy to increase the incomes of those housed through employment at livable wages often leads families to become homeless again after the housing subsidies end, and a new eviction on their record makes it harder to find housing again.
The “successful” outcomes for RRH are generally measured based on the housing status of those exiting the program on the last day that rental assistance is provided. Since most households receiving RRH continue to be housed throughout the length of rental assistance provided, they are “permanently” housed at program exit, even if they do not have sufficient resources to pay the next month’s rent. This overestimates the success of the program, because it doesn’t reflect whether people remain housed after the rental assistance ends.
Rapid Re-Housing has been promoted as an evidence-based practice based on faulty analysis of the HUD funded Family Options Study. This study looked at four interventions to end homelessness for families across multiple cities: 1) long-term rental assistance (such as Section 8), 2) transitional housing, 3) Rapid Rehousing, and 4) business as usual. The study found that the most successful intervention was long-term rental assistance. However, HUD determined that this was too expensive to implement widely. The outcomes were almost identical between transitional housing and RRH. However, since HUD funded transitional housing was more expensive, HUD concluded that RRH was the best approach.
There have been some studies looking at the long-term outcomes for households assisted through RRH. However, due to the difficulties of tracking people after they exited a RRH program, there are contradictory findings among these studies. Evidence suggests that RRH for veterans may be more successful than for the general population, given the greater resources available for veterans in the community. However, longer term evaluations of RRH need to be completed before RRH becomes the primary response to homelessness.
