How to Prevent Homelessness Before It Starts | Emma Beers on The Challenges Ahead

0:00So, Emma, thanks so much for joining me. Um for those of people who don't know about you and your work, would you mind just sort of talking talking us through and just giving a bit of video of your background? Yeah, absolutely. So, uh my name is Emma Beers. I am a uh founder and lead consultant at Civic Impact Consulting. Um I um also the Homelessness Program Lead at Princeton University's Eviction Lab. Um I have been working in homelessness for about 9 years. I started out doing direct outreach with people experiencing homelessness and kind of worked into system-level work in the Chattanooga, Southeast Tennessee area of the United

0:38States. And then, um you know, moved my way towards national consulting, where I've been doing for the last about 3 years, um technical assistance for the US Department of Housing and Urban Development. Cool. Um so, what does the Eviction Lab actually work on at Princeton? What does it do? So, the Eviction Lab is focused on um, you know, providing transparency into the causes of um, you know, evictions, but poverty at large. And uh so, you know, we were able to build kind of the first, you know, national database of evictions across the US that provided some really incredible data that was able to be used

1:19to inform some policy decisions back during the um early pandemic days as as people were trying to figure out how to deal with kind of this massive eviction freeze and the moratorium. And then, you know, what does the the response look like? And so, uh that was hugely successful. And uh you know, Matt Desmond and Carl Gershenson, the lab, you know, decided this was great. Let's think about how we can impact other sectors. And you know, homelessness, I think, came to mind for them right away. And so, um that's where I came in as to to work on a project kind of focused on uh you know, trying to recreate this

1:57process for the homelessness sector and provide some more transparency into, you know, live data across the US. Yeah, for sure. And I mean, we do a little bit of work on eviction prevention, more sort of volunteering and phone calls or things like that. But, talk to me about like, what are the main things or what are the main things that a community action partnership could actually do to to think about eviction prevention? Yeah, I think there's, unsurprisingly, you know, a large part of this is is legal and it's around tenant protection. So, that's one of the things that I think has turned out to be kind of most

2:31successful in a lot of communities is being able to have, you know, strong strong policies in place that protect tenants that, you know, allow for them to have, you know, advocacy during the process. People don't understand the difference a lot of times between having a landlord tell you, you know, you need to get out of the unit or, you know, something like that and having a formal eviction notice filed in court. And a lot of times, there's work that you can do before the formal eviction happens that drastically can, you know, improve your outcomes for for not getting an eviction on your record. And so, something that, you

3:13know, I think we really want to encourage and that we're looking to shift towards is thinking more about how to intervene during this like informal eviction process of kind of, you know, a note on your door that says, you know, you need to be able to pay your rent or, you know, a text from your landlord that says, "You're behind on rent, you know, I'm going to have to take legal action." And trying to provide systems that make it easy to do the outreach during that period, to contact, you know, a central you know, organization who can provide access to to rental assistance quickly in whatever way you need to get that

3:49situation resolved. Yeah, that totally makes sense. And one of the things we were talking about just before this um podcast was prioritization, and that is actually still kind of a problem. So, if you go back, could you explain like how how people who are at risk of homelessness are prioritized in terms of getting housing, but also where it is today and where you think it needs to go in the majority of states? Yeah, so you know, prioritization has been part of the conversation only really since the early 2010s in terms of the homelessness and at-risk populations. And one of the reasons was because

4:26consistently we were seeing that people would only really get services if they showed up at the right door. And so, if they knew someone, if they, you know, had a church they were connected to who was going to offer them rental assistance, they would end up being kind of the person who got like the jackpot, the person who who won and got to get access to resource. And so, prioritization, you know, came in as a way to create more equity in the system, and this is something that you know, is mandated in the you know, homeless response system, but is you know, still not really mandated in the at-risk system at the same degree.

5:03And so, you know, in homelessness response, we see that things that we prioritize are people who have been homeless for a long period of time, you know, people who are vulnerable due to medical acuity, maybe, you know, having a chronic health condition or or mental health condition. Um and then, you know, maybe experiences of domestic violence or household status, do are there young children in the home who might miss school if they don't have stable housing. Um when it comes to prevention assistance, um there's kind of a two components here that, you know, people are really thinking about as they're assessing prioritization. One

5:43component is um obviously someone's level of vulnerability and their level of need, how urgent is the situation, but more I think, you know, what people have focused on is the predictive, you know, kind of potential here and trying to think through who is it that isn't going to be successful without an intervention. Um the Notre Dame Lab for Economic Opportunity Leo, they did an a really incredible research a few years ago in Santa Clara County to do kind of the first randomized trial on prevention, which was super insightful in a lot of ways. But one thing that they noticed that I think took people kind of by surprise

6:25was that only 4% of people who, you know, did outreach to access resources actually ended up becoming homeless after that. So, that's a large percentage of people who are self-resolving in some way. They're finding family members to stay with or they're, you know, getting resources by working jobs or some other kind of opportunity. And so, they were able to provide interventions that drastically cut that number from 4% even lower. Um but, you know, I think what we're thinking about is, you know, how do we make sure that if we need resources and resources are so limited, how do we prioritize them towards people who are

7:04not in that four or in that 4% not in the 96% who are least likely to resolve on their own. Yeah, and tell me it was really interesting when you were saying about if people like knew the right door or they had a contact, they were more likely to get housing essentially. Like, do you think that's still the way the majority of states are working or actually is it more of a um systematic way to to try and prioritize the most at risk? Yeah, unfortunately I think it's still pretty novel to have like a really like centralized system for accessing resources for for prevention. Um I think that, you know, the 211

7:46system, United Way runs a lot of these 211 systems across the US, is what we're seeing the most success with in this area. Um you know, in my in my experience with communities. And I think that, um you know, what's challenging about it is, first off, there is so such limited funding in this area. You know, it's not something that, you know, um is funded through homelessness grants, which is a problem. Uh it's funded through, you know, some other federal funding for for housing stability. But it's in such small amounts that a lot of times people run out of that funding source within the first 4 months that they open it up. And

8:25that's, you know, the community that I used to work in, that's how it was. For 4 months of the year, we would have eviction resources, and then we wouldn't the rest of the time. And so it's hard to have a centralized system where you're encouraging people to kind of call a hotline when, you know, 8 months out of the year, you have nothing to offer them. And And it makes sense why then they're going through side doors and they're kind of doing whatever it takes to get access to resources. So, I think that we're seeing we're seeing real bright spots. We're seeing people who are doing it really well, who are having, you know, a

8:58centralized system that typically does work through 211, where they're widely advertising that you can you can call a number, you can get access to to resources, and there are resources available on their line. And that's kind of what LEO was focused on that study as well. Uh was, you know, one of their huge findings was that there's a difference between people being successful when they call and there are resources immediately available versus when they call and they're kind of told, "Oh, we'll we'll see what we have available in the future. We'll call you back." And that just, you know, didn't lead to get

9:30outcomes. So, I think one of the major issues, unsurprisingly, as we see with a lot of homelessness at risk, is just there's a huge funding gap here that needs to be solved, you know, even before coordination becomes, you know, the number one solution. >> Yeah. Cuz one of the things that I've been really interested in is the work that's been happening in California around trying to predict when people are going to become also become homelessness or get into crisis, but it's one of those super interesting things where I think you can probably build a good model to to predict when someone may have some challenges, but then there's

10:03an interesting discussion around what do you do with that information? Whether you actually want, you know, what whether if you turned up at someone's door people would say, "Okay, great. Like, yeah, thanks for telling me that I may be at risk of homelessness." Um or whether they'd actually accept those funds. So, it sounds like from the California paper that I read that it was actually really successful in helping people stabilize what was going to become a crisis, but what's your perspective on it having worked in this field for so long? Yeah, I think that early intervention is the solution, you know, I think that

10:35I've worked in the homelessness response system and we call it that on purpose because it was never designed to be a prevention system. It was never designed to be, you know, we think about we're basically providing ER services all the time to people and never providing primary care. And that's how we think about prevention, right? It's kind of this primary care system that's designed to to intervene early and we're looking at opportunities to intervene even earlier through kind of predictive modeling and um just understanding those risk factors. And so, some things that we know are pretty directly,

11:09you know, correlated with uh eventual evictions are things like utility shutoff notices. You know, it sounds kind of obvious, but that can happen, you know, in advance of a eviction notice and that's a great way to intervene early and where someone might not know that they're eligible for resources or that there's someone there who can help them. If we were able to be proactive, if we had city and county governments providing notices of here's who's received a shutoff notice this week and giving that information to, you know, a homelessness prevention system to do proactive outreach, that would be

11:44a game-changer. You know, that's that's one huge thing. Another is students with with chronic, you know, sudden chronic absenteeism, right? So, that's something else that we think about a lot is in the school system, you know, we have these McKinney-Vento liaisons they're called and they're, you know, required for every district in the in the US and they're paying attention to students who are at risk of homelessness and they have these these massive lists and our McKinney-Vento numbers are just so so much drastically higher because they're using an at-risk definition of someone who's experiencing housing instability,

12:20which we know is so detrimental to students' success in in school and also their their well-being, their livelihood, their chance of success in the future. And so, you know, by being able to intervene early in situations where we know that there's some correlation between, you know, the the circumstance and and the reality of, you know, moving towards eviction, we're just we're going to have more success and and I think, you know, there are a lot of studies out there that have proven that to be true. That's my son bouncing a ball in the background. But, tell me tell me about like So, once someone is on a list or is at risk of

12:59homelessness or is already homeless, like what are the what are the kind of things that a county gov or a cap can do successfully to help them as much as possible even given the resource the lack of resources they may have? Or Sorry, I need to clarify the question for at-risk >> Yeah, I was I was I was more interested So, let's say someone is now in the system. So, they are they're they are homeless or they're certainly at risk of homelessness and they're waiting for help with housing. What are the things that you've seen in terms of let's say job help, um you know, motivational interviewing, get

13:33you know, trying to find um a safer place for them to live? Like, what are the kind of things that you've seen or who who's done it really well to to enable people to sort of move on with their lives if possible? Yeah, so one of the things that I feel most excited about and encouraged in the sector is um you know, Medicaid waiver programs. So, I think this is it's kind of dense to explain to people who aren't, you know, in in the sector a lot of times, but um the there's been a lot of flexibility provided for the way in which um you know, federal Medicaid funding is used and billed for different kinds of

14:12services. And in the state of California, they're pretty far along in this Medicaid waiver program. I think at this point every single state, I believe, has um one of these uh the waivers that allows for flexibility for for housing support and things like that. But, California's been doing this for a while and I work with several communities out there who have um housing navigators that are paid for through Medicaid and their entire job is to support someone in their housing journey. It is not tied to a housing program, it's not tied to a program kind of that has some sort of um finite number of funds. And this is this is

14:51kind of billed as if it's a medical service. And so, that allows for uh you know, a lot of consistent support that we don't see in a lot of other ways. And, you know, for years we've seen like outreach programs that are kind of designed similarly, but for the unsheltered population. And so, to see a program like that, dedicated case management just for the purpose of moving someone from homelessness or housing instability into a permanent housing situation regardless of what resources are available, is is revolutionary. And I think we don't have a ton of research out on the success of that yet. There's not these, you know,

15:28giant outcomes that we can point to, but I think what's exciting about it is that we're starting to, you know, kind of anecdotally see that more people are getting connected to, you know, an actual resource in the system. So, when we say connected to the system, a lot of times we mean they were assessed for resources. They were added to our list of people experiencing homelessness, but they were connected to a system that's frozen and then nothing was happening in. And so, it's hard to say they were really connected to anything. They were kind of just left there. And so, when we're able to actually provide some level of

16:00resources, like you said, you know, housing navigators are able to help people with figuring out how to maximize their income. So, you know, if they're not connected already to social security benefits or social security disability benefits, um you know, there's just a massive amount of people who aren't connected to these benefits that they're eligible for, and we know that. And so, connecting them to ways to maximize their income, connecting them to benefits such as um food stamps to help them get, you know, reduce the burden of how much money they're spending on food, um you know, maybe on their phone, get

16:33that covered, and looking at other ways that we can increase their income by taking care of, you know, related costs, and then looking at things like, you know, um diversion efforts, you know, trying to help people to get connected to maybe family members or friends where they can have just, you know, respite for a while to get, you know, a little bit more stable while they figure out how to connect to, um you know, uh maybe, like you said, an employment program or some people who need substance abuse support or mental health support. They just need that little bit of stability to get into one of those programs so that they can start

17:10becoming more independent over time. Um and so, you know, housing navigators being able to support people in thinking through those different options of how to maximize your income, how to maximize stability, and uh move towards, you know, a kind of self-resolution, uh I think is a really revolutionary thing happening in the sector, but especially in the state of California. Yeah, I agree. I think the I've got an interesting sort of thing that I'm going back and forth within my head, right? Because obviously, as you know, I'm I'm a little bit biased on think trying to I find ideas where technology can really help.

17:47And there's part of me that says, "Well, I know the amount the reason you were saying, 'Well, there's a front door that people are missing, or, you know, if you don't know the way in, um it's a challenge.'" And I think part of the reason is it's actually just hard to get hold of like a housing navigator who can actually help you, who's got the skills to be able to do it. And so, what I'm particularly interested in is what is the role of technology for, you know, a a group of people who are, you know, underserved, under-resourced, but, you know, probably in crisis. Um like, what is the heavy lifting that, let's say it's an AI or a

18:18piece of technology can do, um versus when do you actually need a person? Because the from from my perspective, when you were describing, okay, this individual is not getting all the benefits that they're able to do, if a piece of technology understands that, then they may be able to just get them the resources. That doesn't take care of any of the mental health challenges, you know, potential spousal abuse, all that kind of stuff. But, there is a there is the optimist inside of me that goes, "Okay, that that seems like possible cuz it's heavy lifting, um bureaucratic stuff." Whereas actually the other and that that may free up case

18:52managers to do or may not. So, what how do you think about that? Cuz you're not probably thinking about this like I am. So, what's your perspective on that? Yeah, I actually, so just this morning got back from a a conference in California that was um it's the Institute for Healthcare Improvement Forum that happens every year, and it's focused on uh improvement in healthcare systems and you know, it's something that I went to to learn about the technology solutions that hospitals are looking at right now and it was so fascinating to hear from them. I think it kind of echoes how we've been feeling

19:24in the sector, but I think what we heard is that, you know, I think the fundamental piece that a lot of people are concerned about, especially in social services, is we don't want technology taking our jobs and I think what, you know, the healthcare professionals made so clear is that we're not talking about taking away people's work. We're talking about where there is not work being done because there is not the staff capacity to handle the amount of work that needs to be completed in general. And so, I think exactly to what you're speaking to, um you know, case managers have 40 or 50 people case loads. In some case, they

20:03don't have a cap on their case loads and they're just required to do kind of outreach to everyone who who accesses the system and it's kind of like this endless, you know, movement of of moving through the list and trying to make sure that everyone, you know, has been talked to, but there's there's not the capacity to really spend time. And so, I think what we're looking to do is to figure out how to take all of the administrative, you know, burden off of case managers, off of direct service staff to allow their time to be spent on relationship building, which is what people are needed for the most. And so, that means

20:40that, you know, things like triaging can often be done with technology. I think in a lot of different solutions. I think through through AI is a really promising practice. And you know, it's shocking that just the idea of having people fill out their own forms, you know, at an intake office is not happening. That's something that's happening, you know, at your doctor's office. Every time you schedule a doctor's appointment, you're asked to fill out a form. You know, when I get a tattoo, I'm asked to fill out a form online. And it, you know, we're still requiring all of that information to be collected orally by a case, you

21:17know, a case manager dictating it. And that just doesn't make any sense. That's so much, you know, burden on case management staff. And what else is difficult about it is that, you know, people are retelling these really difficult stories over and over again. And we know that it's causing moral injury to the intake workers who are hearing these devastating stories. We know that it's causing injury to people who are telling these stories over and over and over again about the worst time in their life and how they got there. And, you know, wouldn't it be kinder and more effective to just have them fill out that information on their

21:55own in some way or be able to provide that information in a way that was still easy for them, low access, where they could talk to a human whenever they wanted to, but they were given the option first of trying to reduce that administrative burden by, you know, other means, whether it's again AI or just, you know, an electronic form completion. Yeah, no, I think that's amazing. And last question for you, um, what's the one thing that makes you the most hopeful for 2026? Mm, um, there's so much that's going on in the sector right now that's um, making it really hard to imagine what things look like in 2026, but I think there's

22:38there's two things that I feel hopeful about. I think the first thing is that, um, I'm, you know, I'm really deeply connected to to folks in the sector. I'm in a couple of, um, you know, forums and online kind of, you know, spaces where people in the sector talk and I'm just hearing all of this collaboration. I'm hearing people who are saying, let's have a book club to figure out, you know, what's happening with the the COC application for homelessness programs. Let's you know, let's get together and just, you know, have a kind of cathartic conversation where we can get out our stress about having to work over the holiday season

23:17because of what HUD's doing. And so, for next year, I'm excited that I think I've seen more collaboration than ever before in the last couple of months and I'm really excited to see where that collaboration moves in terms of people trying to provide support and guidance to each other and really start to share best practices in a way that we've struggled to do historically, but to start to share what's working for them and and not rely on uh you know, federal government to kind of produce those insights, that we're relying on each other instead. I think the other thing is that um you know, we're working at Princeton on um like I

23:57said, some some work to uh you know, provide more transparency in the homelessness data and I'm really hopeful about about that work that we're doing and work of, you know, other people who are doing kind of similar efforts to try to uh just provide support to communities outside of the government and try to figure out how can we become a little scrappier so that we're not at the whim of the federal government for the first time. And I think, you know, we have seen in other countries that, you know, haven't had government be the first to opt in. You know, I've worked with the movements in Australia, a little bit in England and

24:35um in Finland. And in some of these areas, it wasn't the federal government stepping in first to regulate homeless services in the way that has happened in the US. We've seen things be a little bit scrappier, more creative because they're not relying solely on the government to provide the support. And so, I think, you know, at this time, we're going to really need faith-based organizations to step in and really fulfill this role that I think they've said they wanted to do for a long time, which is be the people to help there. You know, we're going to need non-profit organizations working in philanthropy to

25:07raise funds independently from, you know, just good-hearted donors, and we're going to need people who have technology solutions, people who have um you know, technical assistance solutions to step in and try to offer, you know, free support and support that expands capacity for everybody as often as possible, and I I feel hopeful that I think we're moving in that direction. All right, that's great. Emma, thank you so much. Yeah, good to chat. Thanks.