What's New

Prioritization system that apportions homeless housing resources limits access for people of color

Building Changes is calling on communities across the country to reconsider their use of the VI-SPDAT, a widely used standardized assessment tool that helps determine who gets prioritized for referrals to homeless housing programs and who doesn’t. A new C4 Innovations study, funded by Building Changes, finds that use of the VI-SPDAT unfairly favors white people over people of color, thereby perpetuating racial inequities within the homeless system. Housing for people experiencing homelessness is scarce, and the resource therefore must be doled out equitably, free of any influence of racial bias. Learn more.

A single father finds help over the phone to successfully end his family’s homelessness

Newly unemployed, Allen took on whatever odd jobs he could find in order to keep his family housed. The slow trickle of income wasn’t enough, however, and the single father and his two school-age children became homeless. Seeking help, Allen called South Sound 2-1-1, a telephone hotline operated by United Way of Pierce County that connects people to a wide array of community services. The 2-1-1 phone specialist engaged Allen in a brainstorming conversation to generate solutions that would resolve his family’s homelessness quickly and safely. Building Changes helped make this problem-solving telephone conversation with Allen possible by bringing the homelessness strategy of Diversion to the phone lines of 2-1-1. Our project gives Pierce County families an opportunity to end their homelessness through a single phone call. Learn more.

Student homelessness in Washington: Our new data report and dashboards

Last week, we released Students Experiencing Homelessness in Washington’s K-12 Public Schools: Trends, Characteristics, and Academic Outcomes, 2015-2018, the second of our Schoolhouse Washington annual reports analyzing public school data in depth. Our key findings include:

• Academic outcomes for students experiencing homelessness are worse than those for students who are housed. 
• Students of color continue to be overrepresented among students experiencing homelessness. 
• On a per-capita basis, student homelessness is highest in school districts located in rural communities, providing further evidence that student homelessness is a statewide issue. 

See related news coverage in Real Change, The Seattle Times, KUOW, The Spokesman Review, and Kitsap Sun.

Explore student homelessness data in your school district, legislative district, and county using the updated set of interactive dashboards on our Schoolhouse Washington website.

Recent additions to our staff 

In August, we welcomed Edith Yang (pictured above, left) as a communications associate. Prior to her arrival, Edith was the content manager at AFS-USA, an international education organization based in New York. Edith will serve as our lead writer. 
 
This September, we welcomed back Samie Iverson (pictured above, right). Samie returns to Building Changes as a senior manager of education strategy, having previously worked as a practicum student while pursuing her MSW in 2015-16. Prior to that, she worked for a homeless housing agency in Pierce County. Since earning her degree, Samie has worked on a school-based housing program for Tacoma Housing Authority and, most recently, as a McKinney-Vento liaison for Tacoma Public Schools.
 
We are excited to have Edith and Samie join the Building Changes team, and we look forward to the expertise they both will bring.

Worth a Glance

• The REACH Center’s creative and personalized approach to supporting young people in Pierce County is key to a countywide push to end youth homelessness by 2022. (Crosscut)

• Online regional dashboard launching in November will track key indicators on the health of the economy, democracy, individuals, households and communities across King County. (GeekWire)

• Los Angeles officials announce they will dismiss nearly 2 million minor citations and warrants that have kept people trapped in the court system. (Los Angeles Times)

• New federal roadmap for preventing and ending youth homelessness is rooted in both research and lived expertise. (Chapin Hall)

• More hospitals and health systems are shifting their funding further upstream to focus on preventing negative health outcomes, rather than simply treating them. (Urban Institute)

• Disaggregating data is necessary to understand outcomes by race and ethnicity, but not sufficient. A new guide recommends ways researchers can build a racial/ethnic equity perspective into the research process. (Child Trends)