Creating a shared definition of the right end state

The first step to solving homelessness is having a shared definition of what we are trying to achieve. Communities in Built for Zero use functional zero, a milestone that indicates that homelessness is measurably rare and brief for a population. They often work to achieve functional zero for various target populations (veteran, chronic, family, youth, all singles) as steps on the way to making homelessness rare and brief for everyone. This dynamic milestone enables communities to continuously confirm whether they are driving homelessness toward zero.

Assembling an accountable, community-wide team and system

One of the key challenges to ending homelessness is the distributed and fragmented system of homelessness response. In any community, dozens or even hundreds of organizations may serve people experiencing homelessness, each defining success by their own program measures.

Communities in Built for Zero begin by breaking down these siloes to establish a unified team that creates shared accountability for driving homelessness toward zero. In many communities, these teams are committed to working together weekly to examine how they can connect people to permanent housing, moving from a mentality of “my client” to “our clients.”

They can see the system as a whole and collectively remove barriers that are impacting the whole population of people experiencing homelessness.

Using real-time data, which accounts for everyone by name and need

Achieving real-time, person-specific data is a necessary step for driving toward functional zero. By-name data is a comprehensive source of information that accounts for every person in a community experiencing homelessness, updated in real time. Using information collected and shared with their consent, each person on the list has a file that includes their name, homeless history, health, and housing needs.

With this by-name list — updated monthly, at a minimum — the community is able to better match housing solutions with the needs of the individuals. At the population level, this information enables them to prioritize resources, test changes to their system, and understand whether their efforts are driving overall homelessness toward zero.

Centering racial equity

Racism and homelessness are inextricably linked. Research shows that Black and Native Americans experience homelessness at disproportionately high rates, even when we control for disparities in poverty level.

This means that, like so many other systems of care in America impacted by racism, the homeless response system produces racial disparities. The system can maintain or exacerbate these disparities — or work to dismantle them. Communities are using data to understand and improve the racial equity of a community’s homeless response system.

Communities work to track disparities in outcomes, such as:

• The length of time people spend homeless
• Rates of return from housing, which tell us about the level of support folks are afforded and the sustainability of our interventions
• Rates of exit to permanent housing, which can help us think about resource allocation and who is being underserved by our current systems of care.

They also look at system decision-making power and the experiences of people being served by the systems.

Making targeted, data-driven housing investments

Built for Zero communities use real-time data to secure the housing resources they need and target them for the greatest possible reductions in homelessness. Often, housing investments are disconnected from the systems responsible for supporting people experiencing homelessness, or they focus on maintaining legacy efforts that do not help a community reduce homelessness.

With the real-time understanding of changing dynamics of homelessness within a city or county, partners can work together to make strategic investments that will contribute to population-level results, like community infrastructure and affordable housing.

Homelessness is a solvable systems problem

Solving homelessness with Built for Zero

See the Canadian version of this video here

An animated guide to complex social challenges

Building an operating system to end homelessness