When is a shed = shelter?

 By Sarah Owens and Michael Livingston

 

"Ambiguous Sleeping Locations"

Why, when Janet Carlson says it is!

Janet Carlson is the paid Board Administrator for the Mid-Willamette Valley Homeless Alliance and its weird twin, the ORS 190 Entity.  Let's call them the Alliance.  See "MWV Homeless Alliance Launches in Pandemic."  (25 May 2020)

In addition to being the Alliance's Board Administrator, Carlson is also a former Marion County Commissioner.  She lives in Idaho.  

Last week, Carlson authorized Jan Calvin, a paid Alliance consultant/contractor who lives in Salem, to reverse the decision of the Alliance's Point-in-Time Count (PIT) Workgroup co-chairs that those sleeping in Salem's "micro-shelters" on Portland Road NE should be counted as "unsheltered" for purposes of the PIT Count.  This blog will explore the reasons for and implications of the reversal.

The Alliance is a "Continuum of Care" organized in 2020 to carry out the purposes of HUD's CoC Program, described in 24 CFR Part 578.  Conducting the PIT Count is one if its responsibilities.  However, the Alliance assigned that responsibility to the Mid-Willamette Valley Community Action Agency (MWVCAA), which happens to be the Alliance's duly designated "Homeless Management Information System (HMIS) Coordination Entity."  

One of the PIT Workgroup co-chairs works for Church at the Park, which operates Salem's "micro-shelter" program, and the other works for MWVCAA/The Arches Project.  Their decision was based on HUD guidance and an inspection.  First the guidance:  HUD allows persons sleeping in "ambiguous sleeping locations" such as Salem's "micro-shelters" to be counted as sheltered when they are:

...[O]n a campus maintained by an organization, such as a governmental entity, nonprofit, or religious organization, where toilets, showers, and communal food preparation or food service areas are provided.  CPD Notice 21-12, 15 November 2021 at page 29.

However, "special considerations" apply, namely, "the campus must have enough toilets and showers per capita for the resident population within a reasonable distance from the units to count the residents as sheltered", and, because Salem's "regular seasonal patterns fall below 32 degrees or above 100 degrees Fahrenheit"), "the unit must have heat or air conditioning to be counted as sheltered."  CPD Notice 21-12.

The inspection of 2640 Portland Road NE ("Village of Hope" or DMV) found built-in heat, but only 1 toilet per 13 residents and 1 shower per 65 residents.  Conclusion:  not enough toilets or showers to count as "sheltered."  The inspection of 3737 Portland Road NE (CCS) found 1 toilet per 9 residents and 1 shower per 7.5 residents, but portable heaters (extension cords) for leaky, sometimes moldy, units.  Conclusion:  heating insufficient to count as "sheltered" (cooling capacity not mentioned).    

The decision to reverse was not based on an inspection, but on "information from other CoC's [sic] and consultation with HUD."  Reasons as such were not given, but the text of the email communicating the decision (set out in its entirety at the end of the blog) seems to say that reversal was required by the absence of HUD-established "ratio-based criteria" as to how many showers and toilets are "enough" (though others have figured this out), and HUD standards for whether Salem's "regular seasonal patterns fall below 32 degrees or above 100 degrees Fahrenheit" (she must have missed Salem's years-long controversy over warming).  In sum, the consultant/contractor found: 

The resources invested in these emergency sheltering communities move people from unsheltered to a place with sufficient weather protection and sanitary accommodations to consider them sheltered.  [Emphasis added.]

The first thing one notices about the decision to reverse is that it seems to be a policy decision made by contractors.  Contractors who religiously bring such routine decisions as accepting committee members' resignations to the Board.  Yet this decision was not taken to the Board.     

Another thing that stands out is that their decision gave no deference whatsoever to, or even acknowledged the role of, the Alliance's PIT Workgroup or its HMIS Coordination Entity, to whom the Alliance had given responsibility for the PIT.  It even suggests that the co-chairs' decision was  somehow a "discount" of Salem's "efforts to move individuals and families toward housing stability."  Such disrespect, and that is not too strong a word here, is contrary to the Alliance's mission and purpose, the success of which depends utterly on gaining the goodwill and cooperation of homeless services providers whose committee work is in addition to all their regular duties, which goodwill and cooperation is by no means guaranteed at this point in the Alliance's development.  Trust and cooperation are not built by politically-motivated, ham-handed tactical maneuvering.  

The last thing worth a mention is that, by reversing the co-chairs' decision, the contractors removed a perhaps strong incentive to address the defects that the co-chairs identified and thereby improve the situation for program participants.  Want the "micro-shelter village" to qualify as emergency shelter?  Bring in more toilets and showers.  Do something about the heating situation.  In other words, the decision to reverse may well have hurt those the Alliance exists to help.      

The Alliance might have, but has not so far, developed minimum standards for what constitutes "emergency shelter."  Thus the contractors' decision has implications beyond the PIT in that it will, in all likelihood, mean that Salem's "micro-shelters" will be classified in HMIS and counted as "emergency housing" for purposes of the Housing Inventory Count (HIC), along with UGM Men's Mission, UGM's Simonka Place, Safe Sleep United, The Arches Inn, Sheltering Silverton, Family Promise, etc.  Thus, the contractors' decision is likely to affect the Alliance's "statistics" in non-trivial ways -- for example,  its HMIS bed coverage rate, bed usage rate and system performance metrics.

The contractors' decision will also affect the way Salem looks at Salem's "micro-village" program outcomes.  Church at the Park (CATP) operates Salem's "micro-villages" with periodic grants from the City of Salem.  CATP has indicated variously that its goal is to move participants to "more permanent housing destinations", "positive destinations", "positive exit destinations", and "more permanent locations", and uses the below chart to illustrate.

 

The chart implies participants are moving from CATP's "managed sites" (which include duration warming (= sheltered) and vehicle camping (= unsheltered)) into housing of some sort.  A Statesman Journal story reported 18 people moving from the DMV site into "stable housing" and "67% of households [sic]" from CCS had moved into "more permanent destinations."  Woodworth, W. "Salem officials consider next sites for micro-shelter villages for homeless."  (3 January 2022, Statesman Journal.)  Councilor Phillips said at the 18 January work session, "The testimony from DJ Vincent during our last session in terms of the first year metrics on the micro-shelter sites that are managed is that we ended homelessness for about a hundred people" (at 22') and was not corrected.  In short, Salem thinks managed sites are moving people into housing.  

In fact, based on HMIS information provided by CATP, most program (both DMV and CCS) participants exiting to "more permanent locations" have exited to something other than the three housing classifications shown on the above chart, whether to emergency shelter, hotel, residential treatment facility or detox, friends or family (hardly more permanent).  Thus only 15% of DMV exits  (versus the reported 37%) and only 14% of CCS exits (versus the reported 61%) were to the type of housing advertised [figures revised 1/27/22 to correct math error].  The figures would like be even lower if calculated by household, but CATP did not provide that information.  See the chart at the end of the blog [revised 1/27/22]. 

Classifying "micro-villages" as "emergency shelter" would make moving from them to other forms of emergency shelter a lateral move, not "more permanent."  Those thinking, well, we all know "micro-villages" are subpar shelter must bear in mind that HMIS does not recognize gradations in the quality of emergency shelter.  In HMIS, ES is just ES.

CATP "Micro-Shelter Communities" FAQs

The big unanswered question here is why CATP feels the need, if it does, to be classified as an emergency shelter, or to prove that "micro-villages" are "an effective strategy to reduce homelessness."  Is it not enough that they offer some degree of comfort and safety?  That they offer folks who have difficulty meeting social demands of Salem's emergency shelters a way to reconnect?  See Harrell, S. "Relationship building is key to Church at the Park’s model in tackling homelessness."  (6 December 2021, Salem Reporter.)  Certainly, few true emergency shelters could prove they are an effective strategy to reduce homelessness, nor do they feel the need.  They just do the best they can.  Perhaps if CATP had not felt this unnecessary pressure to be what it is not, and to prove what probably cannot be proved, this controversy would not have arisen.  While it is still possible to correct this bad decision,  people have their ideas and people are stubborn.   

No doubt some will try to have it both ways -- that is, count the "micro-villages" as emergency shelter and count a move from them to a true emergency shelter as "more permanent."  And that's fine, if what we want to do is game the system so as to paint the rosiest possible picture for public consumption in order to make providers and donors and government officials, etc. feel better.  The alternative would be to focus on getting the best information one can about Salem's homeless services delivery system, and then communicating that information with as much focus as possible on the nature and extent of the problems, so that those problems can be addressed.  Nothing about this is easy.  Salem needs less obfuscation and cheer-leading, and more clear vision and leadership.  

 

text of Jan Calvin's 1/19 decision

 

Church at the Park's HMIS-sourced Report + Our #s in pink