Housing Is Summit

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David Williams of Harvard University’s Opportunity Insights (OI) began the session by providing an overview on the geography of opportunity. Williams showed significant variation in mobility rates by race when comparing incomes of middle-aged adults whose parents earned similar average incomes. Black men raised in high-income families, for example, were much more likely to fall into lower-income categories as adults compared to their white counterparts. Williams also noted that, across age groups, every year of exposure to a more resourced neighborhood helps improve outcomes. He identified three important policy strategies to reduce disparities in mobility and described OI’s efforts in those areas - 1) reduce segregation, 2) implement place-based strategies, 3) improve higher education. For the first strategy, OI is partnering on a Creating Moves to Opportunity (CMTO) project in Seattle/King County, which is testing whether housing locator services, landlord engagement, and flexible financial assistance can help families access better neighborhoods.

On the second strategy, OI is working to identify characteristics of high-opportunity neighborhoods, such as stable family structure, low poverty rates, good schools, and high social capital. Third, OI is exploring how well different colleges help move low-income students to the top of the income ladder. Part of this strategy is a partnership between OI and 400 colleges to help colleges enroll low-income students and increase access to schools for students from disadvantaged backgrounds. In the Q&A portion, conference participants asked how opportunity mapping data can be used explicitly to reduce racial inequities.

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The Summit concluded with a conversation between Kollin Min of the Gates Foundation, Susan Thomas of the Melville Charitable Trust, and David Fukuzawa of the Kresge Foundation on the role funders play in facilitating and supporting cross-sector partnerships that serve vulnerable communities. All agreed that funders serve as important matchmakers, bringing cross-sector partners together around common issues such as housing instability and homelessness. Min and Fukuzawa noted that high rates of housing instability and homelessness among populations they were already working with drove their foundations’ involvement into housing. Likewise, Thomas articulated her foundation’s interest in looking more upstream to provide resources for initiatives that would prevent individuals and families from losing their homes or becoming homeless in the first place. Min, Fukuzawa, and Thomas noted that foundations are becoming increasingly interested in the national conversation around affordable housing and homelessness. In addition to each foundation’s independent investments, Gates, Melville, and Kresge are all a part of Funders for Housing and Opportunity, a funders’ collaborative that seeks to elevate these issues and bring in new partners. Moving forward, Gates, Kresge, and Melville will continue to invest in remediating environmental health hazards in housing, facilitate matchmaking with housers, service providers, and school districts, and encourage cross-hiring to institutionalize partnerships.

Sharing three examples of education partners a houser can work with, attendees heard from Elm City Communities/Housing Authority of New Haven Executive Director Karen DuBois-Walton, Tacoma Public Schools (TPS) Director of K-12 Leadership Development Thu Ament, and Partnership for Children and Youth President and CEO Jennifer Peck. DuBois-Walton detailed the partnership Elm City Communities has with New Haven Public Schools and other city officials to provide wrap-around support for at-risk youth. The partnership was launched in 2014 and successfully uses data sharing to help these young residents with academic support, career training, gang interventions, and other resources. Since beginning the partnership, they have seen a decrease in youth violence, suspensions and expulsions, as well as increased graduation rates. Ament discussed TPS’ partnership with the Tacoma Housing Authority (THA), which began in 2006 and is currently undergoing a redesign. He shared about an initiative at McCarver Elementary School to help parents and children with academic and social supports and reduce school mobility. He also discussed the financial literacy and assistance THA and TPS continue to provide to families, such as children’s savings accounts. Peck presented on the role nonprofits can play in housing-education partnerships. She told attendees that nonprofits can be a valuable intermediary between housing and education and used the work PCY has done as an example of this effort.

This session presented a case study of how a public housing authority, a private early learning center, and an anchor institution came together to deliver accessible, affordable, high-quality early childhood education to Pittsburgh families. Beginning in 2015, the Housing Authority of the City of Pittsburgh (HACP) identified quality childcare as a great need for their residents. Working with ABK Learning Center and Duquesne University School of Education, they have created a partnership that provides 24/7 quality early learning for HACP residents. One attendee noted that they were “wowed” by this offering. Next steps for the center include a nature-based playground, more involvement from Duquesne students, and additional evaluation of the current offerings.

CLPHA works with the Corporation for Supportive Housing (CSH) and UnitedHealthcare (UHC) Community & State (UHC's Medicaid enterprise) to facilitate the Aligning Health & Housing Systems (AHHS) Project, with financial support from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AHHS Project brings together six large public housing authorities and Medicaid managed care plans in three states: Ohio, Texas, and Washington, to share and analyze data and jointly develop a community health intervention based on insights from that analysis. This session provided an overview of the unique multi-sector, multi-site project as it ends a one-year planning phase. CLPHA's Steve Lucas, CSH's Ryan Moser, and UHC's Andy McMahon discussed the origins of the project and the potential of PHA partnerships with Medicaid managed care organizations, before the participating housing authorities each talked about their experiences. Christina Hodgkinson of Akron Metropolitan Housing Authority, Sonja Nelson of Columbus Metropolitan Housing Authority, Rodolfo Rodríguez of the Housing Authority of the City of Austin, Katie Jakubcin and Jonathan Zimmerman of Houston Housing Authority, and Katie Escudero of King County Housing Authority presented on the panel Seattle Housing Authority is also participating in the project but was unable to participate.

The panelists described varied experiences with different state Medicaid MCOs as well as lessons learned. Data sharing was a challenge but a worthwhile accomplishment--the sites have been able to see what kind of emergent health and healthcare challenges their UHC Medicaid member residents face. Even those agencies who had engaged in extensive health data collaborations before are learning new things, since UHC brings unique healthcare data to the partnership. As a result, each PHA worked with their MCO partners to identify priority health areas to explore further and develop interventions to implement. The PHA panelists offered words of wisdom to other PHAs seeking to engage partners like UHC by breaking down complex concepts, finding creative and practical ways to discuss detailed health data, and partnership strengthening exercises to implement at the outset.

Learn more about the Aligning Health & Housing Systems Project.

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A key challenge facing housing authorities engaged in cross-sector collaboration is how to create and sustain capacity. Facilitated by Keely Stater and Kelly McElwain of the Public and Affordable Housing Research Corporation, the session highlighted two housing authorities that have created capacity in different ways: the Minneapolis Public Housing Authority (MPHA) and the Housing Authority of the City of Austin (HACA). Both agencies consciously prioritized cross-sector partnerships and programming with support at all levels of the respective agencies. Kyle Hanson and Alyssa Erickson from MPHA discussed their agency's approaches to both education and health partnership building and collaboration. Though the agency has worked with community partners for decades, their recent efforts to work with other sectors have been part of MPHA's strategic planning for the future. MPHA's approach starts with getting buy-in "from the top down," with executive leadership driving much of the initial effort and bringing others in to help identify needs and service gaps and develop necessary partnerships. Some of their specific initiatives include a new "voucher-like" program for students experiencing homelessness, as well as re-establishing and strengthening the agency's human services program for all residents. In Austin, HACA's Sylvia Blanco and Rodolfo Rodríguez talked about the rapid evolution of HACA's health and wellness ecosystem work, which started with a vision for the work but came to life by hiring a staff person dedicated to health and joining with a strong health partner in Dell Medical School, represented by Dr. Freya Spielberg on the panel. In the past year alone, HACA has conducted a detailed community health needs assessment in partnership with Dell Med, hired community health workers to drive their work (fueled by a significant new grant), and collaborated with UnitedHealthcare's state Medicaid plan as part of the CLPHA/CSH/UHC Aligning Health & Housing project around data analytics and community health interventions. HACA's rapid growth and capacity building is a testament to leveraging existing staffing to securing additional resources, including grants, and deepening rich partnerships with important health sector partners with significant interest in public and affordable housing. 

During the session, HUD program staff Ryan Jones and Ashley Matthews, working on Family Unification (FUP) and Section 811 programs, respectively, provided an overview of upcoming award competitions and how they have used evaluations and PHA feedback from previous awards to change program criteria to improve the program’s effectiveness. Noting that in 2018, the 811 program received its first major funding increase in many years, PD&R is conducting rapid cycle evaluation of the 811 program to determine if any program changes might improve outcomes. Martha Egan from the Center for Medicaid and CHIP services described evaluations of the 811 program and similar housing programs serving people with disabilities. Both Matthews and Egan highlighted lessons learned from those programs that have informed the 811 program. Specifically, they showed that an effective program requires a high level of coordination between the PHA and service providers, a centralized tracking and data sharing agreement, and portability or a large jurisdiction in order to expand geographic choice of voucher holders.

Denise Wise, CEO of the Housing Authority of San Buenaventura (HACSB), focused on the important program best practice of expanding neighborhood choice. By forming a regional partnership with agencies in their community, HACSB has ensured that 811 voucher holders can port across the area, which is important in a high-cost area like Ventura County. Wise described HACSB’s process to form their partnership and the kinds of details that needed to be worked out in order for the partnership to be successful, , such as consistent waitlist preferences across agencies. Following up on other best practices, Kristen Cane of the Housing Authority of Snohomish County described their collaborations with partnering service providers for the FUP and 811 programs and the challenges that they have navigated over the years. Questions during the Q&A portion touched on the waitlist and referral process for 811, the best way to address racial equity for families served through FUP, and best practices for forming a regionalization partnership with neighboring PHAs.