LOS ANGELES – LOS ANGELES (AP) — Billions of dollars have been spent on efforts to get the homeless off the streets in California, but outdated computer systems with buggy data are often unable to provide even basic information, such as where a shelter bed is open on a given night, inefficiencies which can lead to dire consequences.
The problem is especially acute in Los Angeles, where more than 45,000 people – many of them suffering from serious mental illness, substance addiction or both – live in trash-filled camps that spread across practically every neighborhoodand where rows of rusting trailers line entire blocks.
Even in the state that is home to Silicon Valley, technology has not kept up with the long-lasting crisis. In an age when anyone can book a hotel room or rent a car with just a few taps on their cell phone, there is no system that provides a comprehensive list of available shelter beds in Los Angeles County, where more than 1 in every 5 people displaced in the US
Mark Goldin, Chief Technology Officer at Best United Angelsa nonprofit group, described Los Angeles technology as “systems that don’t talk to each other, a lack of accurate data, no one on the same page about what’s real and what’s not.”
The systems cannot answer “exactly how many people are out there at any given time. Where are they?” he said.
The implications for people living on the streets could mean whether someone sleeps another night outside or not, a distinction that could be fatal.
“They are not providing the services to people at the time when those people need the service or are mentally prepared to accept it,” said Adam Miller, technology entrepreneur and CEO of Better Angels.
The problems were evident at a filthy encampment in the city’s Silver Lake neighborhood, where Sara Reyes, executive director of the SELAH Neighborhood Homeless Coalition, led volunteers in distributing water, socks and food to the homeless, including one who appeared unconscious.
She handed out postcards with the address of a nearby church where the coalition provides hot food and services. A small dog ran out of a tent, barking frantically, while a disheveled man wearing a jacket on a sweltering day shuffled near a stained mattress.
At the end of the visit, Reyes began typing notes on his cell phone, which would later be retyped into a coalition spreadsheet and eventually copied back into a federal database.
“Whenever you move from one medium to another, data can be lost. We know we don’t always have the complete picture,” said Reyes. The “victims are the people the system is supposed to serve.”
Technology sputtered as the homeless population grew. Some ask how can you combat a problem without reliable data to know what the scope is? One annual homeless count in the city recently found a slight decline in population, but some experts question the accuracy of the data, and tents and camps can be seen almost everywhere.
Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass has pointed to technology shortcomings as one of the obstacles she faces in homeless programs and described the city’s efforts to slow the crisis as “building the plane while flying it.”
She said earlier this year that three to five homeless people I die every day on the streets of Los Angeles
On Thursday, Gov. Gavin Newsom ordered state agencies to begin removing homeless encampments on state land, in their boldest move yet after a Supreme Court ruling allowing cities to apply ban on sleeping outdoors in public spaces.
Currently, there is no uniform practice for social workers to collect and enter information into databases about the homeless people they interview, including notes taken on paper. The result: Information can be lost or recorded incorrectly and quickly become outdated as time lags between interviews and when it is entered into a database.
The main federal data system, known as the Homeless Management Information System, or HMIS, It was designed as a desktop application, making it difficult to operate on a cell phone.
“One of the reasons the data is so bad is because what case managers do out of necessity is take notes, either on their phones or on pieces of paper, or they just try to remember, and they typically don’t enter them. until they come back to your desk” hours, days, a week or even more later, Miller said.
All organizations that coordinate services for people experiencing homelessness use an HMIS program to meet data collection and reporting standards required by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. But the systems are not all compatible.
Sam Matonik, associate chief data officer at the Los Angeles-based company People who help the homelessa major service provider, said his organization is among those that must re-enter data because Los Angeles County uses a proprietary data system that does not communicate with the HMIS system.
“Once you manually type twice, it opens the door to all kinds of errors,” Matonik said. “Small numerical errors are the difference between someone having shelter or not.”
Bevin Kuhn, acting deputy chief of analytics at the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, the agency that coordinates housing and services for homeless people in Los Angeles County, said work is underway to create a database of 23,000 beds by the end of the year as part of technology updates.
For case managers, “just seeing… overall bed availability is a challenge,” Kuhn said.
Among other changes is rebooting the HMIS system to make it more compatible with mobile apps and developing a way to measure whether timely data is being entered by case workers, Kuhn said.
It is not uncommon for a field worker to encounter a homeless person in crisis who needs immediate attention, which can create delays in data collection. The Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority aims for data to be entered into the system within 72 hours, but this standard is not always met.
Hoping to fill the gap, Better Angels assembled a team with experience building large-scale software applications. They are building a mobile-friendly prototype for outreach workers – to be donated to participating groups in Los Angeles County – which will be followed by systems for shelter operators and a comprehensive database of shelter beds.
Given that homeless people are transient and difficult to locate for follow-up services, one feature would be to create a map of the locations where an individual was found, allowing case managers to narrow the search.
Services are often available, but the problem is connecting them to a homeless person in real time. Thus, a data profile would show the services the individual has received in the past, medical problems and facilitate contact with healthcare professionals if necessary.
As a secondary benefit – if enough agencies and providers agree to participate – the software could produce analytics and data visualizations highlighting where the homeless move in the county or the concentrations of places where the homeless congregate. .
A fundamental objective of the prototypes: ease of use, even for workers with little digital literacy. Information entered into the application would be immediately downloaded to the database, eliminating the need for redundant re-entries and keeping information up to date.
Timing is often critical. Once a shelter bed is located, there is a 48-hour deadline for the spot to be claimed, which Reyes says only happens about half the time. The technology is so inadequate that the coalition sometimes doesn’t know a seat is open until it expires.
She was impressed with the speed of the Better Angels app, which is in testing, and believes it would reduce the number of people who miss the housing window, as well as create more reliability for those trying to get services.
“I hope Better Angels helps us put the human back into this whole situation,” Reyes said.
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Har reported from San Francisco.
