Blog: Homelessness Ends Here

The following is excerpted with permission from a speech by Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation CEO Jeff Raikes to the Seattle Chamber of Commerce on September 25, 2009.

At the Gates Foundation, we’ve spent several years studying how communities across the country address homelessness. Our new initiative is geared toward helping our partners in King, Pierce, and Snohomish Counties scale up approaches that have worked in other places. The goal is to put the homelessness systems in the area on a more business-based footing.

The inefficiencies of our current system are an accident of history. In the 1960s, the number of homeless people increased dramatically, and well-meaning people responded to the emergency as best they could. But their reactions—all too oftenusually to build shelters—quickly hardened into a system. Nobody strategized about what a good system to reduce homelessness ought to look like; instead, it just grew by accretion.

There are no villains in this story. It’s just that our responses to homeless families were never designed as a system, so it’s no surprise that they don’t operate as a system.

It’s time to do some rigorous systematic thinking now.

Let me give you a handful of examples that show how the current system can be improved.

First, how does a family get into the system in the first place? It turns out you usually can’t get the help you really need until you’re literally homeless. If you ask for assistance because you’re about to become homeless, you’re pretty much out of luck. That doesn’t make any sense. The goal is to end homelessness, not to encourage it.

So we need to focus on prevention. A lot of times, something as simple as a short-term rent subsidy at the right time is all a family needs to avoid an episode of homelessness.   That’s much cheaper for us, and it’s much better for the family.

Second, where do families go when they become homeless? All too often, the current answer is the shelter. The shelter has become the linchpin of our response to homelessness. But shelters are expensive. And they’re not designed to meet a family’s needs over the long term.

It’s cheaper and less disruptive to move families into permanent housing quickly. Rapid re-housing has gotten excellent results in cities like Minneapolis and Washington, DC. We will always need short-term shelters for emergencies like domestic violence. But if we spend some of the money we currently spend on shelters on homes, we will be able to serve more families more effectively.

Third, once families are in the system, they’ll probably get a standardized, “one size fits all” intervention. Some families just need help with the rent. But they tell us that sometimes they get shunted into parenting classes and countless meetings with case managers.

Other families need a lot of help—ongoing mental health counseling or drug abuse treatment—but we don’t make it easy for them to get it. A parent deeply traumatized by violence isn’t going to get what she needs in a basic parenting skills class. In each case, it ends up costing us more to provide a less effective intervention.

If we did a careful needs assessment on every family that becomes homeless, we could intervene at the right time with the right response.

You may notice a pattern: In too many instances, we’re paying more and getting less. This one shocked me: Homeless families in this area have between two and eight case managers, with an average of almost three per family. 

But each inefficiency is an opportunity to do better business—and ultimately to get better results for homeless families.

I hope I’ve made my case that homelessness is something you should care deeply about. And I hope it’s as obvious to you as it is to me that your talents and your outlook are especially relevant to reform.

So let me close by giving you some concrete ideas about what you can do to fight homelessness in Seattle.

First, you can apply your expertise directly. Volunteer to serve on the board of one of the dozens of housing and service providers in the city. They make the homelessness system run, they want to make it run better, and your business expertise and systems savvy can help them do it.

Second, you can put homelessness on your political radar. The courageous officials who are pushing for change need your support. There are some great examples in the area of officials who are thinking creatively about homelessness even though it isn’t particularly popular.

Aaron Reardon, the executive in Snohomish County, has been an inspiring partner to the Gates Foundation on homelessness issues for years.

We’re looking forward to building a similar relationship with Pat McCarthy, the new executive in Pierce County—and with the executive in King County, when that election is decided. You know very well that it will be much easier for these public servants to do the right thing if you give them your vocal support.

Third, you can become part of the constituency for affordable housing in the region. There are so many arguments in favor of it. Affordable housing is good for the local construction and real estate industries. It leads to economic growth. And over the long term, it is a key ingredient to a healthy community and economy.

Seattle is the second most expensive metropolitan area in the country. That is the major contributing factor to our high rates of homelessness.

Finally, you can contribute to the Washington Families Fund. John Stanford’s Aven Foundation is an investor. Tom and Sonya Campion’s foundation is an investor. Boeing. Microsoft. These partners joined because they know the fund pays for proven interventions. If you join them, it can bring state of the art housing and services to even more people.

Betsy Lieberman and Alice Shobe, two of the leaders of Building Changes, the nonprofit agency that leads the Washington Families Fund, are here today. They can tell you more about their work.

The most important thing is this: when you’re considering what kind of action to take on the issue of homelessness, don’t think in terms of charity.

The more I think about Teesha, the more I understand how the right intervention at the right time is not just critical for her and her children; it’s also a great investment in the future of this community.

It can turn generations of instability at taxpayers’ expense into generations of productivity and good citizenship. That’s something the Chamber should get behind. Let’s make homelessness a priority. Because it’s the right thing to do. Because it’s the smart thing to do.

Thank you.

(click below for text of full speech)