Fragile Families

The Institute for Children Homelessness and Poverty (ICPH) sent out a research brief last month called Profiles of Risk: Characterizing Housing Instability. This brief “puts a spotlight on the characteristics that make families who experience homelessness different from poor families who consistently maintain stable housing.”

The research draws on the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study (FFCWS). The FFCWS was designed to understand the lives of children born to unmarried parents, so within 48 hours of birth they interviewed parents of 5,000 children and again when the children were one, three and five years old. The FFCWS showed that compared to married parents, unmarried parents were, among other things, more likely to be poor. The ICPH brief goes on to state “As a result, families in the FFCWS are and economically disadvantaged group, making it an ideal source of information for those interested in homelessness and residential instability.”

The ICPH brief states that “Families facing homelessness are also the most poor of the disadvantaged families in the FFCWS sample; on average they have incomes that are 20% lower than those of poor, stably housed families.”

It goes on to note that “Only 15% of children who experienced homelessness between ages one and five had a mother who was married at their birth. Among poor mothers who maintained stable housing, over half (53%) were married at the child’s birth.”

From the FFWCS “In conclusion, children born to unmarried parents are disadvantaged relative to children born to married parents in terms of parental capabilities and family stability. Additonally, parents’ marital status at the time of a child’s birth is a good predictor of longer-term family stability and complexity, both of which influence children’s longer-term wellbeing.”

Homelessness during the recession

The Department of Housing and Urban Development’s (HUD) released their Annual Homeless Assessment Report to Congress (AHAR) on June 14^th. Based on 2010 data, the report showed that homelessness did not increase at the height of the recession, despite the economy.

That seems to fly in the face of logic. So why didn’t it increase?

The National Alliance to End Homelessness (NAEH) believes that stimulus funding to prevent or rapidly end homelessness helped. “The $1.5 billion in stimulus funds, called the Homelessness Prevention and Rapid Re-Housing Program (HPRP) offered communities significant new resources to curb homelessness resulting from the recession. The AHAR reports that HPRP funds prevented and ended homelessness for an estimated 690,000 people (my emphasis) in the reporting year, and the program also decreased the length of time people in some areas experienced homelessness.”

As one of the 13 agencies investing HPRP funds to prevent newly at risk families from falling into homelessness in Kansas City, MO, we helped only a small percentage of the 690,000 people helped nationwide. While we kept 125 people from becoming homeless, at an average of 100 families (300-400 people), our waiting list for our transitional housing was the highest it had been in years.

Our experience really isn’t inconsistent with the AHAR report, when you dig down into the subpopulations among the homeless. The number of homeless people in families increased by 6% from 2009 to 2010; 20% from 2007 to 2010.

The NAEH identified the real dilemma in the next couple of years. “Unfortunately, HPRP expires in 2012 and there will not be assistance for those hundreds of thousands of households that are facing homelessness.” … “The federal government is considering deep cuts to domestic discretionary spending which will affect poverty programs and social services across the board. State and local governments have already begun to make deep cuts. An efficient homelessness system supplied with significant emergency resources staved off a new wave of homelessness in 2009 and 2010. But with as high unemployment continues, housing prices rise, and safety net programs are shredded, this trend is likely to shift direction; there will be more homeless people and fewer resources to help them. In the face of growing need and deep budget cuts, an important principle must be to protect the most vulnerable. Certainly, homeless people meet that criterion. The homeless assistance system, in which federal resources leverage significant state, local and private dollars, is the ultimate safety net for the most vulnerable people; there is nothing beneath it. The programs work, they are solution oriented, cost effective and humane. A decision to support these programs and the vulnerable populations they serve would not only be an ethical decision, but a smart one.”

Transformation, not just transition

We held a strategic planning retreat last Saturday. I always get some gem from the experience and this one was no exception.

I realized that the core of Community LINC is not transitional housing for homeless families. At our core is transformation. Everything we do goes far beyond striving just to end homelessness.

We equip the parents not only to find and keep a permanent home, but to be less dependent on public assistance, and more dependent on themselves. If they have enough capacity for change, we equip them to begin the rise out of poverty. We equip them to transform their lives and that of their children.

How's it going?

Better really. Given the news that people are more pessimistic about the economy, I wanted to share some encouraging signs for our residents in 2010. For the first time since 2007, more than 1 in 5 residents were earning more than the poverty level for a family of three when they exited the program. The real low point for our families was 2009, when less than one in 10 had income over the poverty level when they left. Even though most graduates in 2010 remained among the working poor, almost 70% had jobs when they left. In 2009, only 36% had jobs when they exited the program.

For our families, there is a strong correlation between how long they stay in the program and whether they have a job. The average length of stay for unemployed people is usually 5-6 months less than for those who find jobs. Residents who experience a long period of unemployment show signs of depression far longer than those who find job, so we believe they leave because they get discouraged.

As more jobs become available, more of our residents will not only leave for permanent homes, but will rise out of poverty. The high point for our families was 2007, when 90% were employed when they exited and 41% were above the poverty level. It may be a slow process, but our families are slowly working back to a better place. I hope we all are.

Benefits and barriers

We’ve been preparing for a “Meet and Greet” with our local, state and federal legislators. In thinking about the issues we want to bring to their attention - barriers our families face in their path to self-sufficiency- we got another real time example. The mom in one of our client families – homeless until the family came to live in our housing – has a new job. She was stunned to find out that she also lost food stamps and has to come up with $70 per month to keep Medicaid for her baby. No time to accumulate some money. No tapering off. It’s just cut off. It’s ironic that a step toward self-sufficiency caused her to question whether her family could afford for her to work.

Our economy is really complex, and we have to be grateful that our government has created safety nets for people at the lowest end of the economic scale. Unfortunately, you can lose some of those safety net benefits even if you’re the working poor. Nobody intentionally designs government programs to discourage marriage for people who need childcare assistance or make it so that someone is better off economically if they turn down a raise to keep their food stamps. But, that’s what happens.

A heart for homeless children

The picture makes me think of the MasterCard commercials. Cost of a wellness clinic $XXX. Difference it will make – priceless.

About two years ago, pediatrician Dr. Raymond Cataneo (cutting the ribbon) came to us with an offer for our children. He had volunteered at Community LINC and could tell by observing our kids, that they showed signs of health problems common to homeless children – asthma, diabetes, overweight due to poor nutrition, etc. He offered to create a free clinic to give our children a medical home while they are residents and after they leave.

For most of our kids, the only medical care they receive is at the emergency room. They are covered by Medicaid, but their parents have no insurance at all. That, and the instability of homelessness, doesn’t lead to good medical care.

So we wrote a grant and made the case for creating a wellness clinic and other things that would dramatically improve things for our kids.

We thought our funder would be a church or a civic group, but we were turned down by two. Our eternally optimistic Associate Executive Director Teresa McClain kept searching until we finally found our funding partner in an unexpected place - a corporation with a heart for homeless children – Humana.

Humana provided the funding to build and stock the clinic, to refurbish our children’s centers, build an indoor play area in the basement of one of our buildings, and pay a part time staffer for the Children’s Program.

Shortly afterward, a second funding partner stepped forward to let us know that, at the end of 2011, they would provide the funding to keep the clinic and the Children’s Program going. This time it was the generous and caring congregation of Second Presbyterian Church. They earmarked a percentage of their capital campaign to go their missions work in the community.

We’re very grateful to all of these caring people and to all of you who have a heart for these children.

Happy New Year.

Jobs are fundamental

We've been watching the number of families who have left the transitional housing program for permanent homes decline over the last two years. To figure out why, Senior Director of Programs and Operations Jeannine Short compared the characteristics of the people who succeeded in transitioning to permanent homes to those who didn't, including their self-sufficiency assessment scores. Not surprisingly, she pinpointed unemployment as the most important factor in the decline.

We knew that unemployment was keeping people from "working the program" and it goes without saying that unemployed people aren't likely to get permanent housing.

Jeannine's study revealed that 100% of the families who exited successfully to permanent homes in 2009 and year-to-date in 2010 had jobs. Only 20% of the families who left without a permanent home had jobs. Their stays were also much shorter –13 months for those who exited successfully compared to less than 5 months for those who did not. Our residents don't always have marketable skills and they are competing for jobs with many others who do. Those who give up without a job, pay a high price for getting discouraged.

Jobs aren't the only factor that permanently ends homelessness. Financial education (budgeting), new life skills, coaching and mental health counseling all contribute to building the skills needed to stay living independently. But, jobs, like affordable housing, are fundamental.

In response, we've beefed up our job placement program by creating a computer lab where our clients can access the Internet, write resumes and get coaching (and the kids can have supervised access at night). And, we've been extremely fortunate to find that one of our interns, Norma, is skilled in job placement. In the few weeks since she took over the lab, she's found jobs for three residents we didn't think had a snowball's chance of being hired. Demand is so high, she's having to set up a schedule to accommodate both our outreach clients and our transitional housing residents. There is light at the end of this tunnel.