Latest / ChangeMakers with Katie Goar / Episode 114 | Part One: Sarah Kahn, President & CEO, Housing Forward

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Episode 114 | Part One: Sarah Kahn, President & CEO, Housing Forward · ChangeMakers with Katie Goar

0:05
Speaker 1: This is change Makers with Katie Gore finding the right
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Speaker 1: solutions for the affordable housing community.
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Speaker 2: This week's change maker is Sarah Kahn, President and CEO
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Speaker 2: of Housing Forward. She leads the fight against homelessness in
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Speaker 2: Dallas and Collin Counties through data driven strategies and strong
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Speaker 2: public private partnerships. With over twenty years of domestic and
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Speaker 2: international experience and homeless services, Sarah is a passionate advocate
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Speaker 2: for sustainable solutions. Sarah, Welcome to the podcast.
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Speaker 3: Thanks for having me. I'm excited to be here.
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Speaker 2: It's an honor to have you, and with such a conversation,
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Speaker 2: I am eager to hear the solutions and what you
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Speaker 2: guys are doing. Before we start, though, I would like
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Speaker 2: to care how your journey into this work first started.
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Speaker 2: What inspired you to pursue this career or just start
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Speaker 2: us off from scratch.
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Speaker 3: Sure, I think my journey is unique in many ways
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Speaker 3: that I've sort of always known that I've wanted to
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Speaker 3: work on homelessness, even at an early age and throughout
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Speaker 3: high school. I wanted to volunteer in this space and
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Speaker 3: really felt like I had a calling to work in
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Speaker 3: this area. I knew from an early age the kind
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Speaker 3: of built in advantages that I had in my family
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Speaker 3: had from growing up in a white middle class household.
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Speaker 3: And so, you know, I think there are several ways,
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Speaker 3: right that white middle class households really are offered privileges
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Speaker 3: that other households, particularly black households and households of color,
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Speaker 3: were not afforded. Right, Even thinking back to when my
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Speaker 3: grandparents were purchasing their first home, that was a time
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Speaker 3: where the federal government was actually providing subsidies, handing money
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Speaker 3: to white families to purchase homes in higher opportunity neighborhoods.
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Speaker 3: And that was the same period where black families were
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Speaker 3: systematically denied access to those neighborhoods and largely shut out
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Speaker 3: of the home mortgage market. And at a young age,
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Speaker 3: I started learning about these things and really felt like
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Speaker 3: because of the privileges that I was afforded that others weren't.
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Speaker 3: You know, it came with a kind of great responsibility
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Speaker 3: to use that power to address inequities because the result
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Speaker 3: of being able to sort of accumulate wealth over generations
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Speaker 3: in households means that there's more cushion to fall back
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Speaker 3: on when a crisis happens, and that opportunity was not
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Speaker 3: provided to all households, and there are huge inequities in
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Speaker 3: that that I always felt sort of a calling to
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Speaker 3: respond to.
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Speaker 2: It's an interesting recognition and awareness on your part, but
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Speaker 2: then you've done something more than just that, you're actually
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Speaker 2: trying to create solutions. It makes me think, like, what
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Speaker 2: would you tell younger professionals, or maybe social workers or
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Speaker 2: just community activists who may be considering next steps. Is
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Speaker 2: there something that you would say about how they can
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Speaker 2: make a difference with homelessness and even equity related to communities.
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Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean for someone for starting out in their career,
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Speaker 3: I mean, I think the most important thing in whatever
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Speaker 3: social justice issue you're going to tackle is that you're
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Speaker 3: very committed and passionate. Because the environment in which we
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Speaker 3: all work is super challenging, it's super complex, and at
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Speaker 3: the end of the day, what I learned from my
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Speaker 3: team and those around me is that it is that
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Speaker 3: mission driven nature that keeps all of us going through
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Speaker 3: those hard times, and the hard work becomes joy for
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Speaker 3: us because we are working towards something that feels very
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Speaker 3: important that we're all very committed to. And so I
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Speaker 3: think the first and foremost I would say, follow your
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Speaker 3: heart and do the work that you care about most,
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Speaker 3: because that will give you get you through the really
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Speaker 3: tough times, whether that's the complexities that we face related
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Speaker 3: to having to fund the work that we're doing, or
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Speaker 3: the political pressure around this issue right now, there's a
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Speaker 3: lot that we're faced with as leaders in the space,
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Speaker 3: and so it's important that we're very passionate and driven
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Speaker 3: by the issue in order to keep going and to
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Speaker 3: thrive in that setting.
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Speaker 2: That's a good reminder to all of us, no matter
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Speaker 2: how long we've been in the industry. So let's talk
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Speaker 2: about some of that work. You're in Dallas and Collin
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Speaker 2: Counties and what exactly are you doing, What are you
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Speaker 2: seeing to combat homelessness? Just start us off and share
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Speaker 2: some of that.
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Speaker 3: Yeah, I am the CEO for Housing Forward and we
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Speaker 3: are the lead agency for the homeless Response system for
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Speaker 3: Dallas and Collin County, which means that we are really
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Speaker 3: the core back of the sector. So we support the
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Speaker 3: sector by providing backbone support, whether that's through fundraising or
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Speaker 3: through helping to design and implement effective strategies, doing training
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Speaker 3: and capacity building anything. We listen kind of deeply to
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Speaker 3: the needs of our providers and try to show up
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Speaker 3: to streamline pathways back into housing for the people that
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Speaker 3: our provider network is working with. And we have had
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Speaker 3: tremendous progress in the last few years really because of
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Speaker 3: the incredible service providers and public and private stakeholders in
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Speaker 3: this community that have all joined forces and have acknowledged
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Speaker 3: that we can have a bigger impact if we're all
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Speaker 3: working together under a unified strategy. And so in twenty
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Speaker 3: twenty one when I started working with Housing Forward, that
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Speaker 3: was the year that kicked off this new way of
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Speaker 3: doing business. Had incredible, incredible service provider partners at the
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Speaker 3: table who were very i think hungry for a lead
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Speaker 3: agency that could work on behalf of the sector to
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Speaker 3: bring people together around a shared vision. And part of
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Speaker 3: that was having all those partners also coming to the
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Speaker 3: table to say, let's coordinate around a unified way of
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Speaker 3: delivering homeless response in our community. And by doing that
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Speaker 3: that set us up to really be able to align
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Speaker 3: them public and private dollars to the same types of
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Speaker 3: housing focus interventions in our community that were proven to work,
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Speaker 3: and by all working in alignment, we have had a huge,
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Speaker 3: well a quite substantial reduction in overall homelessness in Dallas
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Speaker 3: and Collin County since twenty twenty one, and in particular
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Speaker 3: and unsheltered homelessness, we've seen a twenty four percent reduction,
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Speaker 3: which is where we've had a large focus because of
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Speaker 3: just the amount that unsheltered homelessness had grown prior to
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Speaker 3: that period. So we've seen a twenty four percent reduction
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Speaker 3: in unsheltered homelessness, and this is during a time period
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Speaker 3: when national rates of homelessness have actually soared to record highs.
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Speaker 3: So last year was the highest increase in homelessness on
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Speaker 3: record in this country. And so I think all of
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Speaker 3: that just really signals that the shifts that we've made
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Speaker 3: as a community and the strategic moves to transform how
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Speaker 3: we do business together are paying off and paying off
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Speaker 3: in a big way in terms of starting to move
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Speaker 3: in the right direction.
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Speaker 2: What kind of numbers are we talking about that Dallas
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Speaker 2: and Colin County are currently experiencing as far as volume.
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Speaker 3: Yeah, So on any typically we measure trends in homelessness
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Speaker 3: by looking at point in time data annually, and so
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Speaker 3: on any given day, there are about thirty seven individuals
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Speaker 3: and people and families who are experiencing homelessness, and a
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Speaker 3: little over a thousand of those are people who have
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Speaker 3: no shelter at all, And so those are folks that
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Speaker 3: you might see on the sidewalk or in a tent,
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Speaker 3: under a bridge, you know, or behind a building. And
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Speaker 3: so we have responses for both unsheltered and sheltered homelessness.
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Speaker 2: And what are the most successful strategies that communities can
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Speaker 2: do a lot of people are doing a variety of things,
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Speaker 2: some not as successfully as you are pointing out here
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Speaker 2: with this twenty four percent reduction. But if you were
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Speaker 2: going to guide somebody who says, we're overwhelmed, we don't
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Speaker 2: know where to start, how would you guide them?
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Speaker 3: Yeah, Well, for communities, I think that are just kind
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Speaker 3: of embarking on looking at how they might do something different.
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Speaker 3: There are some structural elements to our success, and then
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Speaker 3: there's just the actual strategies that we're in place men
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Speaker 3: on the ground. I think the structural the structural components
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Speaker 3: are things that I just talked about, like it's it's
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Speaker 3: critically important that we are bringing our collective strengths together
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Speaker 3: to have the biggest impact, which means having shared goals,
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Speaker 3: deciding on a standard way to deliver pathways back into
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Speaker 3: housing for people in the ground, and then really building
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Speaker 3: the trust of both the public and private sector to
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Speaker 3: bring their dollars to those interventions so that we can
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Speaker 3: scale quickly the types of resources that we need on
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Speaker 3: the ground, because just like we don't want each provider
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Speaker 3: kind of delivering their own type of service, we also
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Speaker 3: don't want funders each delivering and funding a different type
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Speaker 3: of intervention because then we can't actually make progress together.
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Speaker 3: And so structurally, I think those are the key ingredients
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Speaker 3: in terms of the the interventions that we have found
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Speaker 3: to be most successful. You know, we have the paradigm
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Speaker 3: shift think in our sector over the last twenty years
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Speaker 3: has been moving towards housing based solutions, and it's not
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Speaker 3: always intuitive. For years and years, as a homeless response sector,
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Speaker 3: we thought that there were individual factors that really led
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Speaker 3: to homelessness and that those individual factors that someone might
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Speaker 3: be facing needed to be fixed before they could be
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Speaker 3: successful in housing. And what we've learned is that moving
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Speaker 3: someone in, fast tracking someone into their own permanent home,
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Speaker 3: and then helping people rebuild their lives is the thing
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Speaker 3: that gives us the best results and allows us to
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Speaker 3: keep up pace with the number of people who are
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Speaker 3: coming into homelessness each month or each year, and so
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Speaker 3: we've learned that the best remedy for homelessness is a home.
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Speaker 3: And when we listen deeply to what people experiencing homelessness
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Speaker 3: tell us they need, people tell us they want a
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Speaker 3: home right And once people are in home, then that's
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Speaker 3: the foundation from which we see people and support people
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Speaker 3: to connect back with employment, or to connect with healthcare,
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Speaker 3: or to connect with family and friends. And those things
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Speaker 3: are not unique to someone who's recovering. For publicists, those
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Speaker 3: are the things that we all need to live a
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Speaker 3: good life. And so the strategies that we've put in
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Speaker 3: place are really about meeting people where they're at, bringing
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Speaker 3: our resources to support someone where they're at, whether that's
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Speaker 3: on the sidewalk, living in an encampment, but meeting people
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Speaker 3: where they're at and supporting them through the steps that
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Speaker 3: are required to connect back into healthcare, maabor health care,
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Speaker 3: but also to move directly back into their own apartments
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Speaker 3: as quickly as possible, and then having that wrap around
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Speaker 3: support follow them into the community so that people can stabilize.
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Speaker 2: You're really describing how the homeless services landscape has evolved
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Speaker 2: over time, and I think it's important to to highlight
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Speaker 2: you said the best remedy for homelessness is a home.
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Speaker 2: And how does your community then embrace what you're doing
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Speaker 2: the greater community beyond just the practitioners and the public
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Speaker 2: and private partnerships. What are you saying to your community
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Speaker 2: or is your community telling you to actively and more
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Speaker 2: aggressively get involved. What are the dynamics there.
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Speaker 3: Yeah, that's a great question because I don't think that
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Speaker 3: where I sit, I'm unique in kind of what we
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Speaker 3: are hearing and feeling from the community and from business
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Speaker 3: owners and policymakers in the community. I think ultimately, while
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Speaker 3: we are a city who has made progress and that
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Speaker 3: is unique in this moment, that our numbers are moving
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Speaker 3: in the right direction because of the strategic investments that
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Speaker 3: we've made. While we are moving in the right direction,
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Speaker 3: people are not always feeling that. Right. If you're someone
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Speaker 3: who sees someone who's very vulnerable, who's being left behind
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Speaker 3: on the street in crisis or forced to sleep in
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Speaker 3: a tent or on a sidewalk, when you are visibly
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Speaker 3: seeing that, you're not really in that mode but feeling
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Speaker 3: the progress right. And that's really important because I think
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Speaker 3: what it demonstrates is that we have a lot of
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Speaker 3: work to do. We have a lot of work to do,
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Speaker 3: and we to meet this moment. And because we understand
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Speaker 3: that we have a lot of work to do as
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Speaker 3: a community, we have set our sites to reducing unsheltered
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Speaker 3: homelessness by fifty percent. We've gotten to twenty four percent.
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Speaker 3: We want to get to fifty percent by January of
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Speaker 3: twenty twenty six, and to do that, we know that
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Speaker 3: we need to keep housing people, but we also need
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Speaker 3: to address the need for targeting people in public spaces
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Speaker 3: who are vulnerable, who have been like behind from our
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Speaker 3: rehousing efforts, and to make sure that we have a
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Speaker 3: concerted effort to house people in those public spaces. And
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Speaker 3: that is really addressing obviously the concerns around public health
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Speaker 3: and safety from the community's perspective, but we know it's
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Speaker 3: also addressing our mission of ensuring that no one has
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Speaker 3: to sleep outside in our community.
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Speaker 2: It's a tough dynamic because as soon as you're helping
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Speaker 2: people find permanent housing, you're also having new people enter
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Speaker 2: because the rate by which homeless people are experiencing homelessness
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Speaker 2: for the first time is also going up. So this
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Speaker 2: number reduction is often skewed a little because you have
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Speaker 2: more people coming in. What is the dynamic that you're
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Speaker 2: seeing with people experiencing homelessness for the first time.
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Speaker 3: Yeah, that's another great question. And the way that we've
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Speaker 3: responded to that, Like, I'm just so impressed with this
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Speaker 3: community and our ability to problem solve and rally around
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Speaker 3: things like increases in first time homelessness. The way that
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Speaker 3: we deal with that and the reason that we've been
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Speaker 3: able to continue making progress is we have implemented intervention
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Speaker 3: and intervention that specifically targets that group, and we call
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Speaker 3: that diversion and housing problem solving. So this is an
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Speaker 3: intervention that was pioneered in our family response system. We
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Speaker 3: have now rolled that out and replicated that across all
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Speaker 3: of our emergency shelters. And what that means is, as
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Speaker 3: people have newly become homeless, we now have our most
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Speaker 3: skilled practitioners at the front door of shelters to say
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Speaker 3: to immediately start helping someone resolve their housing crisis, and
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Speaker 3: that means having very creative problem solving conversations to figure
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Speaker 3: out if families or individuals could go back to their
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Speaker 3: previous housing situation, or could we support them to move
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Speaker 3: into a cousin's house or with an aunt, or do
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Speaker 3: we need to help them quickly relocate into another house
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Speaker 3: of their own. And we have a little bit of
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Speaker 3: flexible financial as system that's available for households as well.
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Speaker 3: But what we've learned is that first few nights is
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Speaker 3: very crucial and ensuring that someone is not does not
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Speaker 3: become entrenched in our system and entrenched in our shelters,
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Speaker 3: and so we want to get people out as quickly
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Speaker 3: as possible. Not only is that the best for the
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Speaker 3: individual or family to help them avoid the trauma of
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Speaker 3: a long stay and homelessness, but it's also the cheapest
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Speaker 3: intervention that we can provide, and we have had We've
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Speaker 3: had great, great success with that in the family's response
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Speaker 3: system and this year by rolling that out across our
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Speaker 3: emergency shelters for individuals as well. That is how a
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Speaker 3: community like Dallas, who is a high performing community in
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Speaker 3: implementing kind of leading practice, that's how we've responded to
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Speaker 3: this in a way that helps avoid those spikes and
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Speaker 3: homelessness that we would see if we didn't have that
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Speaker 3: type of response in place.
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Speaker 2: All right, Sarah, we have to stop here for now,
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Speaker 2: but I definitely want to dive into some success stories
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Speaker 2: from your Street to Home initiative in Part two of
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Speaker 2: our conversation coming up next time. Sarah con President and
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Speaker 2: CEO of Housing Forward, will also share an important message
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Speaker 2: for policymakers.
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Speaker 3: We can address the calls from our community to meet
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Speaker 3: public health and safety concerns and also provide a compassionate
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Speaker 3: response to homelessness.
17:39
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening to change makers with Katie Gore. To
17:42
Speaker 1: find out more about Katie, go to quad l dot com.
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17:51
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