Overview

Meaningfully Engaging People with Lived Experience & Expertise

Youth Scorecard: Questions 1E
Family Scorecard: Questions 1E

Note: While the scorecard asks explicitly about inclusion of people with lived experience and expertise (PLEE) in outreach planning, we recognize that it is vital to integrate these voices across all planning in the homeless response system. 

The foundational content below applies System-wide to all populations. Sections at the bottom of this page highlight areas where there may be population specific nuances for Single Adults, Youth, and Families. 

Does our community meaningfully involve people with lived experience and expertise in strategy, service delivery, data interpretation, and policy development?

This page, along with related tools, resources, and case studies, will help you identify pathways to meaningfully engage people with lived experience and expertise to ensure these experts are meaningfully integrated in decision making and that practices are centered on the realities of people experiencing homelessness. 

What does BFZ mean by “Meaningfully Engaging People with Lived Experience and Expertise”?

Meaningful Engagement: Engagement that gives people with lived experience and expertise real influence over decisions, not simply an opportunity to share their story. Meaningful engagement includes true collaboration and is characterized by compensated, sustained roles, shared decision making authority, and treatment of people with lived expertise as subject matter experts and peers to other system leaders.

Lived Experience: Having personally experienced homelessness, housing instability, or other systemic challenges, either currently or in the past

Lived Expertise: The specialized knowledge, skill, and insights a person develops through navigating homelessness and the homeless response system, and through reflection on and applying that experience, help to improve the system and outcomes for people currently navigating it. 

Why does meaningfully engaging people with lived experience and expertise matter?

Improves the accuracy of the by-name dataset

People with lived expertise (PLEE) often recognize gaps, blind spots, or biases in how data is collected or questions are asked, things system staff may not see from the outside. Their input can reveal where the by-name dataset is undercounting or mischaracterizing parts of the population, particularly for groups who distrust or avoid traditional intake processes. 

Builds trust that improves data at the source

People experiencing homelessness are often more likely to engage honestly and fully with peer staff or systems shaped by people who share their experiences. This trust translates into more complete and accurate information reaching the by-name dataset. 

Strengthens interpretation of trends and dashboards

Numbers alone don’t explain why a trend is happening. People with lived experience and expertise can help the community understand what’s driving a spike in unsheltered counts, why reduction efforts are unsuccessful or stalled, or what a data quality gap actually means for people navigating the system – context that strengthens both the by-name dataset and the community’s confidence in the data. 

Leads to more relevant, effective policy

When PLEE are involved in developing prioritization criteria, program design, and policy changes, those decisions are more likely to reflect how people experience and move through the homeless response system, and less likely to create unintended barriers. 

How to build meaningful engagement of people with lived experience and expertise

Hire people with lived experience and expertise

Meaningful engagement is structural, not episodic. The most direct way to embed lived expertise into the system is through paid roles. This includes:

• Moving beyond one-time input: Communities are encouraged to move beyond single focus groups or one-off feedback sessions toward sustained roles such as lived expertise advisory boards, compensated seats on governance or quality improvement committees, and peer positions embedded into coordinated entry, case management, and data management meetings
• Compensate fairly and consistently: Compensation should be comparable to what the community would pay any other subject matter expert for the same time and expertise. Communities should establish a clear, written compensation policy so pay is consistent and predictable rather than negotiated case by case. 
• Build pathways into paid roles: Offer training and leadership development opportunities like advocacy training, facilitation training, and peer specialist certification, and create hiring pathways into paid system roles such as peer navigators, outreach workers, or data and quality improvement staff. 
• Consider lived experience in place of work experience and education: The unique perspectives, relationships, and expertise of people who have experienced housing instability or homelessness should be considered equivalent to formal professional, volunteer, and educational experience. The insights and learnings gained from personal experiences navigating the homeless response system are invaluable and qualify subject matter expertise in the homeless response sector. 

Embed PLEE in data governance

This includes reserving seats for people with lived expertise in by-name data review meetings, case conferencing, coordinated entry governance, and data quality committees, with defined roles and real input into decisions. Invite PLEE to help interpret datasets and data trends before conclusions are finalized. Their perspective can surface context that shapes how the community understands and acts on what the data shows. 

Involve PLEE in policy and prioritization decisions

Ensure PLEE are involved in developing policy about system operating procedures, including prioritization criteria, program models, data practices, and service delivery. Including people who have navigated the system in developing standard operating procedures makes it more likely that established practices will fully reflect the experiences of people navigating the homeless response system, and may surface implementation barriers that are a blind spot to decision makers without firsthand experience receiving services. 

Avoid tokenization

Engage multiple people with a range of experiences and backgrounds rather than relying on one individual to represent an entire population. Define roles clearly and ensure the voices of people with lived expertise carry weight equal to that of other system leaders. 

Population-Specific Guidance

The content above applies to meaningfully engaging people with lived experience and expertise System-wide across all populations. The sections below highlight key nuances and considerations for specific populations your community may be focusing on. (On the toolkit website, these sections will appear as collapsible accordions.)

Single Adults – Population Specific Guidance+

Single Adults with lived experience and expertise, including veterans and people who have experienced chronic or unsheltered homelessness, bring critical insight into how outreach, shelter, and coordinated entry processes function on the ground.

Key considerations for Single Adult lived experience and expertise engagement:

• Peer Roles in Outreach and Coordinated Entry: Hiring PLEE as peer support specialists, outreach workers, or coordinated entry navigators is one of the most direct ways to bring lived expertise into daily system operations and data collection quality.
• Veteran Peer Connection: It is recommended that communities engage veterans with lived expertise, alongside VA peer specialists, to strengthen data accuracy and service coordination for veterans experiencing homelessness.

Youth & Young Adults – Population Specific Guidance+

Youth and Young Adults (YYA) with lived expertise often engage with systems differently than adults; they are more likely to couch-surf, avoid traditional adult shelters, and interact with separate systems like child welfare or schools. Because of this, their insight is essential to designing outreach, data practices, and policies that are relevant, trauma-informed, and trust-based. 

Key considerations for youth lived expertise engagement:

• Address Adultism and Power Dynamics: Young people often encounter “adultism” – the systemic bias where adults hold power and minimize young people’s perspectives. To foster true collaboration, adult system leaders should be trained on how to share power, step back, and treat YYA as the subject matter experts and professional peers that they are.

• Youth Advisory Boards (YABs): Many communities establish a formal YAB composed of YYA with lived experience to inform system design, review data, and shape policy. YABs should be compensated, have real decision-making power, and be engaged as a standing structure rather than convened only when input is needed

• Developmentally appropriate engagement: Meeting structure and support such as flexible scheduling around school and transportation, should reflect the needs and life stage of YYA staff.

• Diverse Representation: Engagement structures should actively recruit and reflect the diversity of the youth population served, specifically prioritizing Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) and LGBTQIA+ young people as they are the most disproportionately impacted by homelessness. 

Families – Population Specific Guidance+


Coming Soon

Built for Zero is actively gathering best practices in family systems. Additional guidance will be added to this section as communities share their approaches.