CIVIC-PG Track B: Co-Creating a Community Platform to Improve Services for People on the Homelessness Continuum

University Of Texas At Austin, Austin TX

Investigators

Abstract

Homelessness encompasses a wide range of lived experiences, from housing instability to reintegration from incarceration, couch-surfing to street homelessness, and episodic to chronic, with some people having multiple experiences, changing over time. As a challenge facing communities nationwide, it is vital to ensure that policymakers and community members have high-quality, up-to-date, data and information about homelessness and the people who are experiencing it. This project will bring together people experiencing homelessness, policymakers, and other community organizations to design a platform for data sharing and collaboration. The platform will help to ensure that people experiencing homelessness can access services and resources, while also providing the best evidence possible for how social service organizations can best leverage their resources to serve this community. Our government-nonprofit-university collaboration proposes to co-create and pilot a community platform supporting data integration efforts allowing for more timely and tailored provision of wrap-around services when, where, and by whom they are most needed. The City of Austin previously has invested in more effectively using its data – a key example is the Affordable Housing Search Tool, which resulted from the 2019 Code for America Summit. The Downtown Austin Community Court (DACC) innovative Intensive Case Management program provides services to people on the homelessness continuum, including substance abuse treatment, counseling, assistance with public benefits applications, job search assistance, and temporary housing. Good Systems, a UT Grand Challenge, has partnered with DACC and other City of Austin departments to improve services for people on the homelessness continuum, including over 60 interviews with case managers and service providers, and over 100 surveys from people on the homelessness continuum. This platform will include a public-facing dashboard providing information at the Austin City Council District level creating a shared interface enabling service providers, users, and community members to obtain and share information about resource availability and needs. The back-end of the system will serve as a digital twin for the City of Austin, allowing for more accurate prediction of when and where resources will be needed, which will only be accessible to trusted organizational partners who complete a memorandum of understanding and a data sharing agreement. The system will empower users to make evidence-based predictions about future service and resource needs. Service providers will be enabled to provide more timely and tailored services to proactively address these community needs. Hence, the platform will bridge the gap between essential resources and services and community needs. This project is in response to the Civic Innovation Challenge program—Track B. Bridging the gap between essential resources and services & community needs—and is a collaboration between NSF, the Department of Homeland Security, and the Department of Energy. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.