This document discusses applying a systems thinking approach to ending homelessness. It describes how traditional solutions that aim to quickly address symptoms can often backfire and perpetuate the problem. A systems view recognizes the interconnections between factors and how actions can have unintended consequences. The document outlines efforts in Calhoun County, Michigan to apply systems thinking to develop a ten-year plan to end homelessness. Key aspects included gathering diverse perspectives, analyzing the system dynamics, identifying leverage points, and committing to long-term fundamental shifts over temporary fixes. The process helped align stakeholders and focus on permanent housing instead of just managing homelessness.

1. A Systemic Approach to Ending
Homelessness
NAEH Conference 2010
John McGah, Give US Your Poor
David Stroh, Bridgeway Partners

2. A Systems View
• Context
• Good deeds are not enough
• Distinguishing traditional from systems
thinking
• The role of systems thinking in facilitating
change
• Ending homelessness in Calhoun County
• Potential applications to your work
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3. Context
• The role of interconnectedness in
addressing homelessness
• Where a systems view is complementary
to current efforts
• Why this is an important lens
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4. Examples of Failed Solutions
• Homeless shelters perpetuate
homelessness
• Food aid leads to increased starvation
• Drug busts increase drug-related crime
• Job training programs increase
unemployment
• “Get tough” prison sentences fail to
reduce fear of violent crime
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5. Characteristics of Failed Solutions
• Obvious and often succeed in the short
run
• Short-term gains undermined by long-term
impacts
• Negative consequences are unintentional
• If the problem recurs, we don’t see our
responsibility
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6. Good Deeds Are Not Enough
• “The road to hell is paved with good
intentions.”
• “When you are confronted by any complex
social system … with things about it that
you’re dissatisfied with and anxious to fix,
you cannot just step in and set about fixing
with much hope of helping. This is one of
the sore discouragements of our time.”
(Lewis Thomas)
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7. The Need for a New Way of Thinking
Traditional Thinking Systems Thinking
• The connection between problems and • The relationship between problems and
their causes is obvious and easy to trace. their causes is indirect and not obvious.
• Others, either within or outside our • We unwittingly create our own
organization, are to blame for our problems and have significant control
problems and must be the ones to or influence in solving them through
change. changing our own behavior.
• A policy designed to achieve short term • Most quick fixes have unintended
success will also assure long term consequences: they make no difference
success. or make matters worse in the long run.
• In order to optimize the whole, we must • In order to optimize the whole, we must
optimize the parts. improve relationships among the parts.
• Aggressively tackle many independent • Only a few key coordinated changes
initiatives simultaneously. sustained over time will produce large
systems change.
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8. A Process of Change:
Establishing Creative Tension
Vision, Mission, Values
(What you want)
CREATIVE
TENSION
Current Reality
(What you have)
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9. A Process of Change:
Creating Alignment
Vision
Current Reality
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10. A Process of Change:
The Role of Systems Thinking
Vision, Mission, Values
(What you want)
Systems Thinking:
•Support people to see how they are part of the
problem so that they can be part of the solution
•Surface people’s unexamined values, mental
models, and self-interests
•Motivate diverse stakeholders to work together
toward optimizing the whole system instead of
striving to optimize only their part of it
•Clarify leverage points to focus limited resources
Current Reality for sustainable improvement
(What you have) •Anticipate unintended consequences of
proposed solutions
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11. Four Stages of Leading Systemic Change
Stage 3
What We Want
Making an Explicit Choice –
Commitment
Stage 1
Building Foundation Stage 4 Bridging the Gap –
for Change -- Focus, momentum & correction
Readiness 1) Identifying Leverage Points
2) Staying on Course and
Learning from Experience
Stage 2 Facing Current Reality –
Understanding & acceptance
Where We Are
1) Gathering Data to Stimulate Curiosity
2) Developing a Systems Analysis
3) Building Support for the Analysis
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12. Ending Homelessness
Building Foundation
Focusing Question: Why, despite our best efforts, have
we been unable to end homelessness in Calhoun
County?
• Calhoun County, MI: estimated 250-500 people homelessness
among population of 100,000
• Homeless Coalition had met for years unsuccessfully to deal with
the problem: disagreements, competition, lack of knowledge
• Opportunity to receive funding to develop ten-year plan to end
homelessness
• Systems analysis integrated with community building process –
involving political and business leaders, service providers, and
homeless people – to produce the plan
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13. Ending Homelessness
Gathering Data - Questions
Interviews held with a community cross section of 50 people:
• What leads to people being at risk?
• What prevents people from becoming
homeless?
• What enables people to move off the streets
into temporary housing?
• What causes people to move back to the
streets?
• What keeps people from moving into
permanent housing?
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14. Ending Homelessness
Gathering Data - Trends
Estimated # Homeless
Efforts to Reduce
Homelessness
Visibility of the Problem
Time
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15. Ending Homelessness
Developing Systems Analysis – High Level Implications
Reduce the IN-FLOWS Increase/speed up
the OUT-FLOWS
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16. Systems Archetypes: Shifting the Burden
Problem Symptom
Quick Fixes
May Only Quick
Address B Fixes
Symptoms
Problem R
Symptom Side Effects
Long Term
Solutions
May Be B
More
Fundamental
Long Term Time
Solutions
People are aware of a long-term, fundamental solution to a problem symptom. However, it is easier for
them to implement a quick fix instead. Over time, their dependence on the quick fix makes it difficult
to implement the long-term solution. This is the underlying dynamic of Addiction.
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17. Ending Homelessness
Building Support – The Irony of Temporary Shelters
Donor Pressure for
Temporary Shelters Short-Term Results
and Supports
Quick Fix (2)
Vicious Funding to Individual
Cycle (3)
Vicious
Organizations
Homeless People
Problem Cycle (4)
Visibility
Fundamental
Solution (1)
Willingness, Time & Funding
Pressure to Make
to Innovate and Collaborate
Fundamental Shifts
Permanent Housing
Critical Services
Employment
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18. Ending Homelessness
Surfacing Mental Models
Donor Pressure for
We have to help
people now. It’s the Temporary Shelters Short-Term Results
humane thing to do. and Supports
Our board
expects
results
What’s the
problem? We Funding to Individual
have more Organizations
pressing needs.
Homeless We have to
Problem protect our
Visibility People
own funding
Willingness, Time & Funding
Pressure to Make to Innovate and Collaborate
Fundamental Shifts
Permanent Housing
Critical Services
Employment It might be best practice
- but this is too hard,
takes too long, and is
too expensive.
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19. Ending Homelessness: Making a Choice
• Focusing on temporary shelters has
appeared to be the right thing to do
• Although shelters help people cope with
homelessness, they actually make it more
difficult to end it
• The community, especially service
providers, has to make a choice between
coping with homelessness and ending it
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20. Ending Homelessness: Identifying Leverage Points
Increase Funder
Collaboration
Permanent
Donor Pressure for
Solutions Temporary Shelters Short-Term Results
Mindset
and Supports
Funding to Individual
Increase Organizations
Problem Homeless People
Visibility Problem Increase
Provider/Community
Visibility Collaboration
Willingness, Time & Funding
Pressure to Make
to Innovate and Collaborate
Fundamental Shifts
Permanent Housing
Critical Services
Employment Increase Access to
Housing, Employment, and
Critical Services
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21. Ending Homelessness:
Staying the Course
Jennifer Schrand, Chair of the Calhoun County Ten-Year Plan
to End Homelessness, observed:
I learned so much, especially the difference between changing a
particular system and leading systemic change. You (systems
thinking) helped involve our consumer – homeless people – in
developing the community’s ten-year plan to end homelessness.
You expanded the view of service providers so that they are now
committed to helping the consumer overall instead of just “doing
their own thing” as individual organizations. Agencies took a hard
look together at their individual and collective responsibilities for
failing to end homelessness, and recognized that their emergency
work hides the problem and reduces community pressure to solve
it. The goals of our new plan to end homelessness derive directly
from your analysis of the whole system and identification of leverage
points to achieve a sustainable solution.
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22. Ending Homelessness:
Learning from Experience
• Money raised for an Executive Director, new services, office space.
• Breakthrough in collaboration: Homeless Coalition voted
unanimously to reallocate HUD funding from one service provider’s
transitional housing program to a permanent supportive housing
program run by another provider.
• Eight committees are underway with clear charters producing
monthly reports for the Coalition and Executive Committee on
progress towards their goals.
• The local Director of the state’s Department of Human Services
personally intervened to change the community-wide eviction
prevention policy to enable people to stay in their homes longer.
• The street outreach program is going well to place people into
housing.
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23. Process Challenges in Ending Homelessness
The problem is chronic and has defied people’s best
intentions to solve it
Diverse stakeholders find it difficult to align their
efforts despite shared intentions
They try to optimize their part of the system without
understanding their impact on the whole
Stakeholders’ short-term efforts might actually
undermine their intentions to end homelessness
People find it difficult to stay focused on a limited
number of high leverage interventions
Promoting particular solutions (e.g. best practices)
comes at the expense of engaging in continuous
learning
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24. Interrelated Issues in Ending Homelessness
• Affordable Housing for Low Income People
• Availability and Access for Living Wage Jobs
• Availability and Access for Social Services
• Availability and Access for Health Care
• Education
• Value on Individualism
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25. Thinking Systemically About An Issue:
Affordable Housing Example
• List 3-5 factors related to the issue, e.g.
Level of permanent, safe, affordable, and supportive housing
# people at risk of becoming homeless
Affordability for landlords (their ability to make a decent profit)
Level of vacant housing
Gentrification, i.e. # of unaffordable homes
• Show cause-effect relationships among the factors
Show cause-effect links among listed factors
Add other factors as necessary to complete your logic
Identify any feedback relationships, e.g. how causes become
consequences and vice versa
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26. Example: Dynamics Affecting Affordable Housing
Reducing Affordability
For Landlords
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27. Making Sense of Complexity: System Archetypes
Virtuous/Vicious Cycles Amplification and Reinforcement: a reinforcing process producing
success or disaster.
Balancing Process Corrections: we try to reduce the gap.
Fixes that Backfire Unintended Consequences: the long-term negative consequences of a
quick fix.
Shifting the Burden Unintended Dependency: the quick fix that we become addicted to.
Limits to Success Unanticipated Constraints: the limiting mechanism on spiraling growth.
Additional Archetypes:
Escalation Unintended Proliferation: the harder you push, the harder the competitor
pushes back.
Drifting Goals Inadvertent Poor Performance: actual and desired performance levels
gradually falling.
Success to the Successful Winner Takes All: your success produces my failure.
Tragedy of the Commons Optimizing Each Part Destroys the Whole: everyone takes advantage of
a resource that doesn’t belong to anybody.
Multiple Goals Conflicting or Competing Commitments: trying to do too much or satisfy
conflicting goals can lead to accomplishing none.
Accidental Adversaries Partners Who Become Enemies: two parties want to cooperate, but each
sees the other undermining their success.
Growth/Underinvestment Self-imposed Limits: we push on the growth side and underinvest in the
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28. Elements of a National Approach
• Expand model by getting additional input at
state and national levels and running additional
local demonstration projects
• Draft policy brief on thinking systemically about
ending homelessness
• Plant the seed in Congress
• Convene forum for legislators and get the
system in the room
• Develop and disseminate video shorts
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29. • John McGah, Director, Give US Your Poor
– john.mcgah@umb.edu
– (617) 287-5532
– www.giveusyourpoor.org
• David Stroh, Principal, Bridgeway Partners
– Dstroh@bridgewaypartners.com
– (617) 487-8766
– www.bridgewaypartners.com and
www.appliedsystemsthinking.com
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