Fresh Fridays: Housing and Homeless Systems

This month’s Fresh Friday featured a discussion on housing and homeless systems in Rhode Island, spanning state, municipal, and nonprofit sectors. The panel explored opportunities and barriers to greater synergy within these systems.

Ali Steinberg from One Neighborhood Builders facilitated the panel, which included:

Kim Simmons, Executive Director of the Rhode Island Coalition to End Homelessness
Michelle Brophy, Associate Director, Interdepartmental Services/Vulnerable Populations, Rhode Island Department of Behavioral Healthcare, Developmental Disabilities & Hospitals (BHDDH)
Paula McFarland, Executive Director of the Pawtucket Housing Authority
Jennifer Hawkins, President and CEO of One Neighborhood Builders

The discussion focused on the challenges facing homeless and housing systems, as well as the barriers preventing individuals from receiving stable housing and effective care.

Kim Simmons outlined the causes of the homelessness crisis in Rhode Island, noting, “The primary driver, I think, is that there’s such a huge gap between incomes and rent. And that’s nationally but in Rhode Island, as well, and you know we’ve had affordable housing for low income [and] very low income [households] shrink, and unwilling landlords to participate in housing and working with other primary service providers, and I think also wages have not kept up nearly as what they need to for individuals and families to be able to afford housing.”

Data collection plays a pivotal role in understanding the scope of the homelessness crisis and outlining a path forward. Michelle Brophy emphasized, “We have so much information that we can gather to actually see, what are some circumstances that are leading to homelessness, and see if we could potentially fix them systemically. So we can avoid people falling into a homeless system. I also think that we need to do a better job letting the state know where are people who are experiencing homelessness are coming from. So we can create a cost benefits analysis, because we do know, we’ve proven time and time again, […] that it actually costs more to keep people cycling through homelessness than it actually does to provide them a rental subsidy and services.”

A central issue in the discussion was the necessity of new, service-centric housing that provides resources to help individuals stay permanently housed. Jennifer Hawkins expressed how the current system fails to incentivize the development of supportive housing: “On a systems level […] it’s really is in many instances all of the responsibility and onus placed on the developer. One Neighborhood Builders wants to develop permanent supportive housing. We want to set aside units in our next development for persons who are on the coordinated entry. But then it’s on us to find the rental subsidy partner. Bring it all together. There’s no one at the state level. Who’s saying, ‘I’m gonna make that happen for you? I’m gonna make sure all of these services and and subsidies are woven together. So you don’t have to hustle to make that happen.’ And I think that at a systems level, […] when it’s harder and there’s no real extra credit you get for doing it, it’s really hard to convince my colleagues to stand up and do permanent supportive housing.”

Many of the panelists echoed the challenge of providing a complete umbrella of services. Paula McFarland emphasized the importance of working together: “I am all about collaboration, because I’m here to do housing. I can’t make sure that our agency is doing it all. So I want to collaborate. And that’s why I asked the city to help us. We’re not going to do the mental health work we’re going to work with our partners here in the city to do that work. But we need to get people into our organizations. […] We see overdose of the drug activity. We lose many residents due to that so we know that that needs to be addressed in our housing. But we need partnerships to do that. And then we also need to talk about the cycle of people becoming homeless again, because we don’t have the resources.”

Previous Fresh Fridays Sessions:

Fresh Fridays: Housing and Homeless Systems

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