Racial inequities in Coordinated Entry assessment, Diversion via phone, new staff What's NewPrioritization 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:
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. Worth a Glance
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