Leah McGowan-Hare: There's one
moment from this pandemic, and
actually many moments,
that I'll never forget.
When the stay at home order went into
place, my daughter looked at me and
said, what about people who
have no home to stay in?
She was right.
What about them?
Where do they go?
How do you social distance
in crowded shelters?
How do you avoid catching
COVID-19 when you're sleeping and
eating in public spaces, and don't have
access to clean water to wash regularly?
This pandemic has brought to light
a lot of issues, serious issues,
that we really need to face head on and
lean into racial injustice,
healthcare disparities, and homelessness.
Good morning.
I'm Leah McGowan-Hare, and
welcome to another one of our live
weekly conversations,
as part of leading through change series.
A chance for you to hear from leaders that
are doing their best to work through
these very challenging times.
Now, before I turn it over to our
amazing host, Salesforce chief
philanthropy officer Ebony Beckwith,
I want to preview the next hour.
Ebony will be interviewing Dame Louise
Casey, on how she is leveraging
her extensive experience in
her role as the chair for
the Institute of global homelessness,
while also currently leading
British Government Task Force during,
excuse me, COVID-19 to end homelessness.
Now after that,
we'll hear from Beth Sander,
principal at Community Solutions,
and how she leads built for zero.
A movement of more than 80 cities and
countries across the United States,
excuse me, counties providing,
proving that homelessness is solvable.
Beckwith will also show us a special demo
on how they are using Tableau
to power their data operations.
Now, as we do every week
on Leading Through Change,
we want to help those
that need it the most.
Millions of people already rely on
the United Nations World Food Program for
food they need to survive.
And COVID-19 is making these
conditions even worse.
This pandemic could double the number
of people suffering from severe
hunger by the end of the year.
To help prevent a hunger pandemic,
the World Food Program is scaling up
to reach 100 million people across 86
countries with life saving support.
Now, if you can,
please go to salesforce.com/WFP,
and join us in ensuring
the world's most vulnerable
people have enough to eat
during this very critical time.
Now, through July 31st 2020,
Salesforce will be
matching donations up
to a total of $150,000.
Again, that's salesforce.com / WFP.
Now, over to you Ebony.
Ebony Beckwith: Thank you so
much Leah, and Hello everyone.
I'm Ebony Beckwith,
Chief Philanthropy Officer at Salesforce.
Today's conversation on homelessness
feels especially relevant,
as the COVID-19 crisis continues to
displace tens of thousands of people.
Adding to our global homeless
population of over 150 million people.
To give you an idea of just
how many people that is,
that's almost four Californias,
two Germanys, all of Russia.
It's 2% of the entire world's population.
So, helping homelessness is
a top philanthropic priority for
Salesforce as it relates to our work
with the Sustainable Development Goals,
specifically around ensuring that our
communities and our cities are safe and
inclusive.
Today, we've donated over seven million
dollars, and our employees have
volunteered nearly 150,000 hours to
organizations combating homelessness.
And when COVID-19 hit, our
impact labs team convened international
organizations to discuss solutions for
how to help the unsheltered shelter in
place, going to Leah's point earlier.
Let's be clear, an issue as big and
complex as homelessness cannot be
solved with philanthropy alone.
It requires heart plus action.
And my next guest is all about action.
Damn Louise Casey is the Board Chair of
the Global Institute of Homelessness.
She is also the head of the British
government task force focus on
homelessness during COVID-19.
And since March,
she has moved over 15,000 people without
shelter into temporary accommodation.
That's what I call action.
Dame Louise, it is a pleasure to welcome
you to leading through change today.
Thank you for being with us.
Dame Louise Casey: It's
my absolute pleasure.
Good evening from London,
is what I should say.
Ebony Beckwith: Good evening.
Yes, that's right.
So, you'll have to indulge me.
I wish we could be doing this in person,
so I could give you a squeeze.
But I have an ice breaker question for
you.
And this is something you must have been
incredibly honored to receive a dame
hood from the queen,
as your name implies Dame Louise Casey.
For our non British listeners,
can you tell us a little bit more about
this honor, and how it came to be?
Dame Louise Casey: Well,
this is a surprise.
Nobody told me you're
going to be asking this.
I feel like going and getting it,
because it's on my wall just over there.
But, I mean, essentially we have
an honor system, and what it does is,
it recognizes people's contribution
above and beyond their day jobs.
If they're volunteers, or people that
make additional contribution basically.
And so I was made, so
a dame is the equivalent of a sir,
and we're a rare breed.
There are less dames and sirs.
No surprises there, as Bob says something
ruder, Ebony but I often check.
So yes, I was blown away by, I remember
getting home at 20 past 10 at night.
And there was a normal brown
envelope in the thing, and
I was thinking, what's this?
Why is the bloody Cabinet Office
writing to me at home?
What have I done wrong?
I was literally, what do they want?
And I opened it up, and it said DBE,
which is dating basically,
and I, yeah, it blew me away.
There is just is a very
sad thing is my mom.
Neither of my parents
were around to see it.
I think my father who was an Irish
Republican, would have been about it,
whereas my mother would
have been delighted.
Ebony Beckwith: I think they'd be very
proud, because this is granted to you for
your work with families and
vulnerable people.
So, tell us a little bit about the moment
when you knew this would be your
life's work.
Dame Louise Casey: Wow.
So, I think it's taken me a while
to get my head round this, Ebony.
But, I think I feel like I had
a calling really, to try and
serve the poor and
particularly people who are homeless.
And, of course, in later years as
we get older, we look into our,
I certainly have looked into my
family more and more clearly.
My father was from a huge Irish family in
Ireland, and they were tenant farmers.
So, when their father died,
the entire family were made homeless.
And basically one son was sent to
New York, one son was sent to Canada,
one son was sent to Australia.
My father arrived on a boat at
the age of 13 to Liverpool.
And another brother Kieran came to London.
So, I think it just devastated
completely their family.
And I think that many, many years later,
that now runs quite deep in my soul.
And I don't think people should experience
homelessness, and I certainly think we
should do a significantly
better job to protect children.
Ebony Beckwith: And you certainly are.
So let's fast forward to today.
You are leading a British Government Task
Force focused on helping homeless during
COVID-19.
Tell us a little bit about how
you're leading that effort.
Dame Louise Casey: So it I mean,
to be honest, definitely, I mean,
I realize I'm on a huge Salesforce call,
but it's been a bit insane.
I mean, essentially, I was in Sydney doing
the Institute of Global Homelessness work.
And it became clearer.
I was doing street work in Sydney
with colleagues there trying to
figure out how they could
kind of do a fantastic job to reduce the
number of people sleeping on the streets.
And the kind of the COVID-19
starts to become a real thing and
nobody knew about it.
By the time I got home into London I
was like, what are we doing?
I mean, literally, what are we doing?
So I used the fact I'm the dame and
I'm really annoying and
I muscled my way into Whitehall.
And I told them that they really
needed me and that I was needed.
And I basically asked them
if they needed some help.
And it's been a tremendous
experience that I don't think
I've ever experienced before that
the number of people that have stepped up.
And organizations like
say Mongo's in London,
one of our biggest charity that helps
with rural sleeping and homelessness.
They literally opened up 800
plus hotel spaces overnight.
It's just been
an extraordinary experience.
And I think the thing that's
really profoundly interesting
when I met you over the last
year in your HQ in Salesforce,
we were talking about homelessness and
how to stop it.
I think what's been really
interesting about COVID-19 is that
basically we got those people in so
we could stop them from dying.
Our key job here was not
solving homelessness.
We were staying ahead of that disease.
And our job was to get as many hotels so
I was on the phone to
Travelodge to Interhome.
Literally can I can I can I?
Teams of people trying to
basically get as much university,
hotel any redundant accommodation
where people could self isolate.
So we didn't.
We closed down all our shelters.
We took everybody in off the street.
We had what Beth and
I would call by name lists.
So we knew who those people were and
we knew how to go and get them.
And essentially we brought in 15,000.
In the space of weeks I wrote out
to everybody in the country saying,
let's get everyone in.
Don't ask questions,
don't worry about it, just get them in.
And now it's about over 20,000 people
have come in during this crisis.
And I mean, it's early days yet but
we had the Office of National Statistics,
which is an independent body,
published on Friday statistics I've
been holding in my heart, holding on,
hoping to God that we had really
done the best job to protect people.
And as of the end of June,
we've only lost and its 16 too many, but
we've only lost 16 people to COVID-19
in our homeless and shelter population.
So for
me that justifies the resources, but
it also shows what is possible
when you want to do something.
So everybody says tackling
homelessness is impossible.
Of course it's not bloody impossible,
it's whether you want to do it.
And so we took something that was
impossible, and we made it possible.
And I've just been
privileged to be part of it.
Ebony Beckwith: Great work.
And the perfect segue into
my next question to you and
we get this question a lot,
and I'm sure you do, too.
Because a lot of money and
resources have been thrown at this issue.
So let's talk about why you think
homelessness is truly solvable and
how we can go about solving it.
It's a question on everyone's mind.
Dame Louise Casey: So, I mean,
it's a couple of things,
this is second time around really for
me so 20 years ago.
Under the 97, 98 administration here,
the Tony Blair administration,
they made it a political priority to
reduce the number of people sleeping on
the streets in the United Kingdom by
two thirds over a three year period.
And by the time we left
off three years later,
the numbers of people
were in the hundreds.
We took it from the thousands and
reduced it to the hundreds.
And I think in the intervening period and
colleagues that my very wonderful esteemed
colleagues in the United Nations know I
say this I say it a bit too publicly,
is that we went from a country
of national celebration and
good practice to,
frankly a country of national failure.
And actually the numbers of people
sleeping on the streets went back
up again.
The kind of the grip on
the system was lost.
Resources were withdrawn.
That classic political moment
that when you can't see it, and
it's not under your nose, you stop funding
it, which is one of the challenges that
actually you have to be able to fund the
system in order to get long term change,
not just moving people quickly off the
streets but finding permanent solutions.
So the way I do this, I mean I kept
this so simple when I went for
the rough slip for
the homelessness czars job 20 years ago,
I'm almost embarrassed to
admit this 20 years later.
I mean,
I obviously started out young Ebony.
Basically I call it the bathtub.
So for me, the way to solve homelessness
is to essentially it's like
an overflowing bathtub
that we have on the graph.
And so basically when street
homelessness is an overflowing bathtub,
it's really straightforward.
Anybody that has a bathtub that has
overflown lucky you've got a bath you live
in a house but when it overflows,
you know the first thing you do
when you run into the bathroom?
You switch the taps off.
It's the first thing you do is you
prevent the problem getting any bigger.
What do we spend most of our
time doing in homelessness?
Just alleviating the problem.
We put food out on the streets.
We open shelters.
We keep alleviating and alleviating
the suffering caused by homelessness.
We don't think what's creating it and
how do I stop that.
The second thing you do is you
reach into the bathtub and
you basically have to go for
the difficult and the challenging.
So this is not going for
the low hanging fruit.
This is not going for easy wins.
You get in there and
you help the people stuck in the system.
And for me people that are on the streets
and I saw them in San Francisco,
I see them in London, I see them in
Sydney, I see them in Bengaluru,
I see them in Santiago in Chile,
that what you have on the streets quite
often that people have been out too long.
They have very significant problems and
the solution to their problems as I
used to say to persuade people that
could give me money from the government.
The solution to rough sleeping is
neither cheap, easy or basic, and
it's more than a cup of soup.
So you've got to switch the taps off and
sometimes that could be
something really simple.
So for example, we knew in London, which
prisons discharged on a Friday evening and
essentially sending them to the streets.
We knew which prisons discharged on
a Monday morning give us a fighting chance
to prevent homelessness.
I know during COVID-19 but
basically we've had 1000 people come
out of prison onto the streets.
We've had 1000 people out of
hospitals come onto the streets.
Everybody on this call
knows that's preventable.
So you prevent it.
You dive in and
deal with the most difficult.
You'll upset a few people along the way.
Because there's a hard truth here is
a lot of people do a lot of things, but
they don't solve the problem.
And you have to be clever
to solve homelessness.
You don't just keep doing things.
It's I don't want to nit but
Session next, but data and
information used cleverly is
how we've all got things done.
And then the final thing you do is
you have to recognize the fact that
the solution to homelessness
isn't just a house.
Though I think we all think that you can
shelter your way out of homelessness,
that you can house your
way out of homelessness.
Last time I checked,
I need to get people treatment, and
I need to get people jobs, and
I need to remove the label homeless.
And the most extraordinary thing about
COVID-19 is that some of my colleagues
working on the front line, and I get
this virtual world, but I get to see it,
is they brought in people that we
didn't think we'd brought in in years.
We've brought in people who were
frightened because of COVID-19, and
now they're staying in.
So I don't know, Ebony, I think everybody
thinks something is too difficult,
and people fund what's difficult.
And actually we should be looking at and
doing what's smart and what's clever.
And that's what the bathtub is,
it prevents, it deals with the most
difficult, and it gets it gets the system
to think about how you help people
out of that system permanently.
I said to the prison's minister in this
country last week, you have to work out
whether you're the prison's minister,
which is not a bad thing to be.
Keep people alive in prison,
make sure you don't have riots,
do it as humanely as possible,
drop the number of suicides.
Or are you the minister for
reducing the risk of reoffending?
If you want to stop people reoffending,
start before they go into prison, work
with them whilst they're in prison, and
don't send them back out
onto the streets at the end.
And that's another version of the bathtub.
It's all doable.
Everybody on this call must know
that we if we get this right,
it is achievable and it is doable.
Ebony Beckwith: Absolutely, and I love
the imagery of that, it's very clear and
I think that we can all understand it.
So for organisations who want to take
action and help solve this problem,
what advice would you give them?
Dame Louise Casey: So what do I think?
I think the first thing that I wanted
to mention at this stage, Ebony, and
I know Salesforce and
other organizations are really committed,
is that we have a moment right now around
the Sustainable Development Goals and
work that the Institute of Global
Homelessness has been doing alongside
UN-Habitat, and
actually UN officials as well.
Which is in February for
the first time there is now an agreed,
broad definition of homelessness.
And the reason I wanted to say
this is because the sad fact is
we don't know what the extent
of homelessness is globally.
We know more about how to count birds
than we do how to count homelessness.
And at this point I have to name
check a friend of mine, a guy called
Mark McGreevy, who is quite well known
in the international homelessness world.
And he went out in his back garden one
da,y he's lucky to have a back garden, and
he saw a guy next door, this is a few
years ago, Ebony, with a pen and paper.
And he was basically counting birds and
counting what type of birds they were.
And that was done by the Royal Society for
the Protection of birds.
Would we had a royal society for
protection of human beings.
But anyway, don't get me on that one.
So what is really interesting
is that we are able globally,
because the RSPB is a global organization,
to look at trends,
to look at where some birds are dying out,
some birds are growing in numbers,
where migration patterns happen, but
we can't do that on homelessness.
And I think that is one
of the biggest problems.
I've worked for 20 years for
governments, for prime ministers,
I'm on my fifth Prime Minister right now.
If you don't see it, and count it,
targets and action don't follow.
So I think one of the most powerful things
that could come out of what is happening
at the moment with United Nations and
the Sustainable Development Goals
is a very specific piece of
work around homelessness, and
how we globally can compare it.
Otherwise, my worry about
the Sustainable Development Goals,
as they are, is none of them mention
homelessness specifically enough.
Even number 11 doesn't get into
the detail of the fact during COVID-19,
all around the world, the story that
Leah told about her daughter saying,
I'm alright Mum, we're all right,
but what about everybody else?
That has to be made gritty and proper.
And the only way I think we can do that,
Ebony, is to be very firm about
wanting that global count,
wanting that global definition.
And I think that's the key thing for me.
Ebony Beckwith: I think that's right.
I think everyone knows in business,
what we measure, what we track,
what we count, what we hold ourselves
accountable to, that's what gets done.
When we take our eye off the ball or
we don't have targets,
it gets a little loosey goosey.
So I completely agree
with your point there.
So now what about, go ahead.
Dame Louise Casey: I think the thing
I've been thinking about and,
I know Community Solutions and
Beth is going to talk about this after,
and I completely back that work.
Is that if we had something,
my thing here is like 15 years ago is
the last time anybody had
a look at a global count.
15 years ago the whole tech
industry is completely different.
You don't need to go in your back
bloody garden anymore and do a census.
We can do it all on our, I won't show my
Nokia, but I'll show you that one instead,
we can all do it on these phones.
It's like there is a way in here to
actually say, what can the public do?
And I think if you do global count,
if you do local analysis, so
what's really important
is that it connects.
So in this country in Sydney,
in Adelaide, in Bengaluru,
in the 80 cities that Community Solutions
is working with in the United States,
we have data and by-name lists
that mean when COVID happened
Leah's daughter could know that somebody
somewhere was going to go out and
make sure we were safe
harboring those human beings.
So you want global count,
you want local analysis, [SOUND] and
that gets you action.
And the other thing I think we get wrong,
sorry, I'm talking too much.
I'm watching the clock go around, but
I'll just say this then I'll shut up.
I told you, I talk too much.
Ebony Beckwith: I love it, I love it.
Dame Louise Casey: I'm not the mad Dame
on the line with 10 million people.
I've got my moment to tell
the world this is doable.
Ebony Beckwith: You use it.
Dame Louise Casey: Amen.
And so I think the thing I think it's
really interesting about your question,
which is so profound,
is we spend a lot of time thinking
we're solving this and we're not.
And part of how we do that is we get
real information about real people and
their real lives.
So I haven't met many people,
and I've done street work now for
30 years, and I still do it,
I still annoy people by doing outreach
work in every city that we work in.
And if you start listening
to somebody's story,
you'll find out why they're out there.
It doesn't take long to work out that
they've probably moved from shelter to
shelter to shelter.
Or that they've been evicted
because they're black, or
that they are a woman and
they've got a child.
True story, they put this woman in
a mental health shelter when she was
completely compos mentis because
she was in debt in New York for
something like $100.
I could have given her $100 and
she wouldn't have spent a year in a mental
health shelter with her daughter.
So all of it is solvable if
you use the information and
you let the people power
their own solutions.
And we can do that anywhere in the world.
I desperate to get my hands at
some point on San Francisco.
I just put that out there.
Ebony Beckwith: [LAUGH] You're
welcome to come help us with this too.
So let's talk about the people and
the public.
So for everyone watching this program and
for everyone who wants to get involved,
for the young ones like Simone
who think about what can we do?
What is your call to action for all of us?
Dame Louise Casey: Well,
that's another unexpected question, Ebony.
My starting point about all of this
is what should I be doing as myself
before I call on government or
anything else?
What should I be doing?
And I think right now because
of COVID-19 and because we're
looking at the world now, where
actually maybe we can end homelessness.
Because we, certainly in this country,
we have no reason to go back
to mass homelessness here.
We can lift the safety net.
But the starting point is what can I do?
And those things are the real basics.
So you can make donations as has just been
highlighted on the call about food hunger.
You can give your clothes to somebody
rather than actually chucking them out.
You can choose how you
look after your neighbor,
then you can volunteer in night
shelters and day centers.
Then, if you're a tech person,
you can help somebody like me work out how
the hell you do Tableau and how you
make sure that you're able to do it.
Through to then corporates
deciding that maybe they want to
put their full weight behind something.
There'll be people on this call that are
running something to do with employment.
I tried to get all the fruit farms, so
we have fruit here every summer and
the fruit farmers basically need
people to pick their fruit.
I thought fine, fruit farm,
people, connect.
And the fruit farmers wouldn't have
thought of that for themselves.
The government spent money doing some
sort of wartime pick for Britain thing.
We had upwards of 5000 people
in London who were in hotels,
some of whom we could have got those jobs.
So I think for me,
it's think conscience and
think action and
that's a personal decision.
And what flows from that though is
then what can we do as organizations?
And that's where I think some
of the partnership works,
some of the stuff like Institute
of Global Homelessness.
We are one thing to put ourselves right in
the middle of a global call for action.
We are powering through this work with
colleagues in the United Nations.
We can't do it alone.
And if organizations wants to join us or
individuals,
that's one of the routes that can be done.
But the starting point for
me in all of this is you have to have
hope that something is possible.
I just don't accept, Ebony,
I hope I stay this way to my dying day.
We do not have to have a world
that is this terrible.
We can come out of COVID in my country
with children not being hungry and
with people not being on the street.
And maybe we do a better
job by old people and
lay it across all of that is we certainly
know here, I'm glad we know it.
Is that COVID-19 disproportionately
affects people from the black,
Asian and minority ethnic communities.
And we know that because
they're more likely to be poor.
So these are the facts we now
need to do something about.
And it's incumbent on everyone
to do something about it.
Ebony Beckwith: Thank you,
Dame Louise, that was brilliant.
I love what you said,
think conscious, think action.
Now we're going to open it up to Q&amp;A.
So Leah, I'll turn it back over to
you to read us the first question.
Leah McGowan-Hare: Sure, thank you.
There's so
much great information from that.
And you should also delve into
motivational speaking there,
Miss Dame Casey because I'm ready to go
out and like we're going to fix this today
[LAUGH] So the first question is Amy on
the livestream asks Miss Dame Louise.
In the salesforce.org Impact Labs program,
our community stakeholders and
pro bono volunteers are collaborating to
identify ways technology can
help address homelessness.
Now, I know you mentioned a little bit
about this in one of your answers,
but what advice do you have for us and
other companies who are looking to
leverage technology to address and
solve the issue of homelessness?
Dame Louise Casey: So in a way,
I think Beth will knock this out the
ballpark actually, to use an Americanism.
Did you notice that?
I'm trying to be global.
I said it very quickly because I was
conscious of everyone's time.
But it is utterly crazy that the last
time we did a global count, or
estimate actually, was 15 years ago.
And I think here we will have more
of a grip on it because of COVID-19.
But there is something that
is crying out to use and
leverage the tech industry across
things like by name lists,
analyzing data in individual cities,
in individual towns.
And I think one of the things,
Leah, I found very interesting and
actually Roseanne Haggerty who
is one of Beth's colleagues and
I have been on other
sides of the Atlantic for
about, I don't want to admit to it,
but it's at least 20 odd years.
And we've been on a parallel journey
where we talk from time to time, but
it's really interesting.
We've come at this from you've got
to be clever to solve homelessness.
And part of being clever is
having the right technology.
And I don't think we have a consistent
approach to that technology.
So we've got, for example,
Microsoft are really active in Sydney.
Salesforce is active in
quite a number of places.
Apple active, I don't know, Amazon.
There's lots of great
companies doing things.
I just think there could be something here
to use this global moment of the pandemic
to unite around,
how do we have consistent data, or
data as you would call it in some places?
How do we have consistent
information that also drills
into something that
somebody like me can use?
because that's the other thing.
I want to be able to know when
a town is running into trouble.
I want to know when the warning
signals are coming up.
So Blair introduced a traffic light
system here, red, amber, green.
So basically, lots of our delivery
plans have red, amber, green, and
when they get to red, we panic.
We try and stop it at amber and
we're all happy when it's on green.
And we all do that certainly my day,
Leah, we were doing that using paper.
In fact, I'm going to make you really,
really laugh.
I'm literally sitting on this call
with something we call a treasury tag.
And let me look at everybody's face.
Ebony is like I told you not to
get this woman on this call.
She's just to live and uncut, yeah.
Leah McGowan-Hare: We like that.
Dame Louise Casey: [LAUGH] And so
we have to make this doable and
I think that's where the tech
industry can just really floor it and
could make us sick really
massive significance.
And some of this stuff we
don't need to research.
But we don't need to spend three years now
trying to work some of this stuff out.
But we have just shown in
the United Kingdom what you can do
when you've got determination,
we could do a lot better for
the longer term in different
ways shown as possible again.
Leah McGowan-Hare: Awesome,
this next question is for Miss Ebony.
Ashley on the live stream asks,
what can the us learn from
what Dame Lewis and
IGH have done internationally?
Ebony Beckwith: That's a great question.
I think we have to go back
to the bathtub analogy.
I love that.
We have to turn off the faucet.
And the best way we can do
that is to look at the data.
As Dame Louise mentioned,
we have to understand the people behind
that crisis and how we can help them.
And once we understand the people,
I think the key is in then doing more to
unlock solutions for how we can help.
Again, I go back to what I said in the
beginning, it's using heart plus action
to understand what we need to do and
then taking the right action to do it.
Leah McGowan-Hare: Absolutely and
I know you know this Ebony,
Brian Stevenson talked about
the power of proximity, right?
How do you serve people if you're not
there with the people to understand
what they need?
And I love,
that's what the bath analogy did for me,
it was like you need to go deep and
understand.
It's very easy to throw money at things,
it's very easy to throw food, but
it's not solving the problem.
Getting in an understanding the stories of
how some of these people got into these
situation.
Maybe there is a pattern
that we need to look at.
So I love that analogy, I never
thought of using that but thank you.
I'm going to look at my
bathroom very differently now.
[LAUGH]
Next question is Elliot on the Livestream
asks, how would rethinking the definition
of homelessness and consequently
the type of data required to measure it
contribute to evidence based policies?
And the achievement of STG target 11.1 by
2030 ensure access for all to adequate,
safe, and affordable housing,
basic services, and upgrade slumps?
Dame Louise Casey: Is not familiar.
Leah McGowan-Hare: Yes,
it is I'm sorry, mistaken.
Dame Louise Casey: No, no,
that's absolutely fine.
It's just like doing one of
those interviews when somebody,
I hope I've still got
the job at the end of it.
Let's her know that might need a new one.
But I mean, I think the really interesting
thing, Leah, about that question
is that right now nobody knows
whether they will achieve it or not.
So if I was British government,
quite often you don't want to count stuff
actually, you're not that
keen on defining things.
because when you define them and
you count them,
you're going to do something about them.
And I think there is just a real
issue with that particular systemic
of development,
which the whole of housing and
homelessness hangs on to that one,
thinking 11.1 this is ours.
But actually, if you look at most of
those sustainable development goals,
you've got people that are homeless,
that will be left behind,
even when you get movement on the back.
That's where the kind of
the work that Richard Curtis and
others are doing it's so
important, but it's so
important that we layer it with
this issue around homelessness.
And if you can't compare it, if you can't
count it, if you can't know the quality of
it, then we won't know whether we've
met those goals effectively or not.
And my real fear is
something that's got real
momentum the United Nations
staff missions.
I mean, the really interesting thing
about the thing that happened in February
with with the United Nations, that it was
the African missions who collectively
lobbied the hardest to have the definition
and comparison on homelessness.
And I think that speaks volumes.
If they need it and want it,
then why is the rest of
the world standing in their way?
Leah McGowan-Hare: Great,
our next question,
Malia on Livestream asked Dame Louise,
in the US the main issue
is resources from mental health help and
workforce reentry.
That are the main causes
behind homelessness.
What programs can be instilled
to help remedy this?
Dame Louise Casey: So that's where I go
back to the fact that I think people have
to really know who is on the street and
where they're coming from.
And until you know that,
you don't know how to switch the taps off.
I've no doubt in some of the cities
I have visited in the United States
that the number of people
with very significant and
indeed florid psychiatric illnesses and
mental health issues is way too high.
And an amount way too high,
it's a tragedy.
They're dying young, they're dying ill,
they're dying alone,
they're dying in the proximity of
other people that are equally ill.
It's just shocking beyond that actually,
but I think you have to go back and
look at the system to see how could you
have stopped that in the first place.
So the fact that I did outreach in Chicago
many years ago when we first set up
the Institute of global homelessness, the
homeless in DePaul University in Chicago.
And I was out with an average team.
And the average team reached a point where
all they could do was give people socks,
give people water.
And give them a ticket so they could go on
the all and be legal throughout the night.
And we met a 60 plus black woman who have
been discharged from hospital that day,
who was carrying in her carrier bag,
chemotherapy treatment.
And she had a cyst on her neck, just huge.
And I looked around and
I just thought this is desperate.
This is for maybe 2014, 2015.
And I thought, Chicago?
Surely we can do better than this,
and they can and they have.
But it takes those individual stories, I
think to then say what do you really need.
And then you know how much treatment you
need to be spending and how and why.
I'll say really quickly,
the data in London showed one thing,
we have 5,000 people wrecking
sleeping rough in England.
In London, our numbers were really high.
But off the people
sleeping rough in London,
the number of people that have
been out for more than two years,
who therefore had drug, alcohol,
and mental health problems was 88%.
Your approach to homelessness in
London is not just a numbers game,
it's about working with that 88%.
And that's where some of the charities
have done just such a tremendous job
during COVID-19 and watching that
clock literally go down to zero.
I'm so well disciplined,
it's unbelievable.
Leah McGowan-Hare: [LAUGH] But
we still have time even just for one more.
You're just such a wealth of knowledge.
We cannot let you go without pulling
as much as we can out of you.
So our next question is Dame Louise's for
you and we'll keep it brief.
How should we think about keeping people
house now that they are off the street and
off shelters,
now that they are in temporary housing?
What is the UK doing?
Dame Louise Casey: Well, I have to
say we're pretty fortunate in the UK
because we've persuaded sorry,
that's too harsh.
Enabled the prime minister to
find 105 million pounds for
us to spend on making
sure we keep people in.
And I don't want to spend all of
that money in hotels, Leah, I mean,
that's the other thing but what we want.
And what to be honest,
what we want is the same.
Every local authority,
every Council in the country,
every charity has done just
something utterly extraordinary.
It's been such an amazing thing to
be part of in such a terrible time.
I mean, COVID-19 has just been awful.
Our death rates in the United Kingdom
as you know are high.
Our tested positive rate,
when we can test people, it's been high.
We've got old people passing away and
cams not being able to be held by
their loved ones as they pass away.
It's been a really, really tough time.
And in the middle of all of that, there's
been this group of amazing people that
basically have got 15,000 people in and
we were lucky determined to make sure
that they don't go back to the street.
So we've had obviously commercial
hotels go back into use, but
it's a range of things.
I'm trying to buy hotels.
We're using university accommodation
that isn't being reused.
We're using permanent housing.
So for the first time, we're getting new
affordable permanent housing with support.
So we've got about 105 million and
about 160 million in permanent
housing which should go a long way near
to actually making sure that those
people don't go back to the street,
but we still have a way to go.
But we'll we'll get there.
Leah McGowan-Hare: That's right.
Because as you stated,
it is not impossible.
And if you think about it,
impossible spells I'm possible.
Dame Louise Casey: I like that.
Ebony Beckwith: [LAUGH] Dame Louise,
thank you so much again for
joining us as this was really
informative and brilliant at all.
As always, thank you for bringing your
unique perspective to this critical
issue and
offer all the work that you're doing.
Really, thank you so much for
being here with us today.
Dame Louise Casey: Thanks Ebony.
Thanks Lea.
Ebony Beckwith: Well, now I want to
bring in our next guest Beth Sandor,
Principal at Community Solutions.
Now Beth has spent more than 20 years
working in the field of housing and
homelessness, both here in the US and
in the United Kingdom.
She is also the co-director of Built for
Zero, a national movement of more than 80
communities working to end homelessness,
measurably end homelessness and
I love what Beth is going to
talk to us about today.
So Beth, thank you for joining us.
Thank you so much for having me.
Beth Sandor: What
a pleasure to be here and
to have the honor of hearing
Dame Louise Casey talk before me.
Ebony Beckwith: Good, thank you.
Let's starts back by telling us how
Community Solutions think about
homelessness.
Beth Sandor: Yeah, well, I think Louise
Casey talked about it in detail that first
off, homelessness is completely solvable.
And we are in a moment now
more than ever when we see
homelessness as a public health crisis.
And I think COVID-19 has demonstrated
that with people experiencing
homelessness twice as likely to
be hospitalized with COVID-19,
two to three times as likely to die
if they contract the coronavirus.
And we also know that in the public
health crisis that is homelessness,
black and Native Americans are four
to five times as likely to experience
homelessness than white people and
these are not problems of individuals.
These are problems of
systems that we built.
And just as we build these systems,
we can dismantle them and
build systems that actually work and
get the results that we all seek to
get which is ultimately a sustainable.
And as you said,
measurable end to homelessness across
every community in the United States.
Ebony Beckwith: That's right and I love
the idea of the Built for Zero movement.
Tell us a little bit about that and
how that got started.
Beth Sandor: Yeah,
like Louise Casey talked about,
it's been a very long journey.
A 20-year journey for our organization
of learning and iterating, but
with the mission always been a lasting end
to homelessness that leaves no one behind.
And that work started 20 years ago with
the kind of intuitive belief that I think
everyone listening will connect with that
housing is the solution to homelessness.
And so our team started in
New York City building beautiful,
permanent supportive housing.
We built over 3,000 units of
housing across New York City.
But after doing that for a decade,
it had to take a hard look at.
There were still very vulnerable people
on the streets outside those buildings.
And so while we were winning awards for
that, we weren't really making
the difference we thought we were that
our buildings ended homelessness for
the people that were lucky
enough to get inside them.
But that systemically,
we weren't seeing that change.
And so we started to talk to
people sleeping on the street and
ask what was their experience.
And when you do that, you quickly find
out that kind of horrible Chutes and
Ladders process that very vulnerable
people have to navigate to be able to move
off the streets or
out of shelter into permanent housing.
And so we had this uh-huh moment of okay,
this is a process improvement problem.
This is a systems change problem.
And so what if we designed the system
really around the user if we said,
who is the most vulnerable perso?
But for us, redesigning that system
won't come off the street into housing.
And so we launched in 2010,
a national initiative called the 100,000
Homes Campaign with the mission of that
was to start with the most vulnerable
people, that people with highest mortality
risks and redesign the system for them.
And a lot of that work was really built
off of the work that happened under
Dame Louise Casey's leadership in the UK.
And so we took that and said, okay,
how do we make that work here in the US?
And so we did that and after 4 years and
working with 186 cities who housed
105,000 very vulnerable people.
We saw a lot of great results for
individuals.
But what we also didn't see is that
at a population level, the cities and
communities we work with, we expected that
if you housed lots of very vulnerable
people and redesigned your systems
to accelerate housing placements,
you would see the overall population
reduce and we just didn't see that.
So in 2015, we got back together again and
said, okay, what are we missing here?
And we designed what is now built for
zero to answer the question,
how do we move away from counting
up to housing placements?
And instead, count down to a population
level production that is sustainable and
measurable and consistent across
the United States and so on.
We invited any community who was willing
to work with us on that to come in and
we were lucky enough that 75 at that time
and now at communities kind of raised
their hand to do solve for impossible to
say, okay, what would it take to do this?
And we have learned so much over the last
five years of this work and have seen
now 12 communities that have ended
sustainably veteran homelessness and, or
chronic homelessness on a path to ending
all homelessness across their communities.
And that's our mission now is how do we
create credible evidence proof points
across every type of community in the
United States that this is possible and
scalable?
Ebony Beckwith: I love that you're
taking a data driven approach to ending
homelessness.
You're taking a look at it.
You're analyzing the data.
You're going back to the drawing board.
You're iterating and
then being really innovative.
And you mentioned when we
talked about this earlier,
there are over 80 communities
that you're working in.
What does it look like in one of the
communities that have successfully ended
homelessness?
Beth Sandor: Yeah, I think it's a great
question and I'd start by explaining what
it feels like to a person experiencing
homelessness when a community ends it.
And one of the first communities that
ended veteran homelessness, Gulf Coast,
Mississippi which is a region
of six counties in Mississippi.
When they ended veteran homelessness,
if you were a veteran and
you became homeless, you would be
permanently housed in eleven days.
And that is so powerful to live
in a community and a region,
really that you can trust that if
the worst thing happens to me,
if all the other systems fail me and
I become homeless that in my community,
people will ensure that I get
safely rehoused in 11 days.
And that's what we want it to look like
in every community across the country for
every single person.
And that is happening now in
communities we work with and
is in within our reach to scale.
But we have seen among the 12
that have ended for one or
more populations and the 40 plus
communities that are seeing reductions.
All of them have had
an a five key things and
I think we just touched on a lot of these.
The first is,
a commitment to a shared measurable
aim that ending homelessness is
not just that slogan or a notion.
It is something that we can
objectively measure and
are committed to looking
at all of the programs.
And all of the investments across our
community are going to add up to get into
zero on homelessness.
And we're going to look at that every day,
every week, every month and
know if we're making progress.
So that's the first thing we see
communities are making progress or
have gotten to zero.
Second is a data feedback with both
qualitative and quantitative data
on what's happening in the system and
what's happening for people.
And I think this is especially important
as we look at ensuring that our system
isn't causing more racial disparity
as we redesign the systems.
And then they have a dedicated
nimble team who has the capacity and
the capability to do systems change work.
And I think we see in
many communities that
you're asking people to solve very complex
problems on the back of other jobs.
So, they're doing program administration,
a federal funds, and
then on the side they're supposed
to figure out how to solve for
one of the hardest challenges
in our communities.
And we need to invest in a team
like we have at the national level,
but at the local level, and
really dedicate, live and
breathe this issue without having to be
distracted by other side jobs as well.
And then that team, equipped with
the data, equipped with the ability to be
accountable for the aim,
has testable, proven practices.
So things like housing first, and
motivational interviewing, and outreach,
that they are testing
solutions at the local level.
But it seemed not as a recipe,
there are around six things every
community in America should do.
There are six things that every community
should test and adapt in their context and
see, is it driving reductions?
And then that team and
someone mentioned this in the questions
has access to flexible resources.
So that the resources aren't constrained
by something we thought would work two
years ago, that that team can
pivot in response to the data when
they get new information and
have the resources to bring to bear that.
And if they find they need something
different than they needed six months ago,
they don't have to wait a year to apply
for funding they can move in that moment.
Ebony Beckwith: Great, anything else in
addition to these five things that you
mentioned that will make this a new
reality for communities around the world?
Beth Sandor: I think the belief that it is
possible not only among the people doing
this work, but I think everyone who has
influence over policy and resources.
I think often we show up in a way that
seems like maybe we actually don't
believe we can solve this problem.
And credible proof points,
I think the more evidence there is that
communities are doing this,
I think the more believable it becomes.
And the more of a reality it will become.
The political will I think
that Louise talked about this,
about in the UK when they made huge
progress that was because the political
will was really brought to bear.
And I think that is something that every
person in a community can help do is
really hold mayors, and county executives,
and businesses accountable for outcomes.
And say,
are we driving reductions in homelessness?
Do you have access to that data?
And if you don't, we demand that
you transparently get it and
allow us to see what progress we're
making for all this investment.
And I think one of the key things
to make it a reality is to
really move away from talking about
homelessness as a static problem.
Which I think has really
not served as well
as like if we just build 10,000 units
of housing we can solve this problem.
Homelessness is such a dynamic
problem that is changing all the time
based on the ecosystem in our communities.
And that we need problem solving skills,
data, and
an approach that is as nimble and
dynamic as the problem is.
And we need to talk about it that way.
And think about ending homelessness
as really constantly solving.
Ebony Beckwith: Right, now I know you have
a demo that you wanted to share with us
today to illustrate how you're using this,
the power of this data, and
the power of the Tableau platform.
I will hand it over to you
to take us through it.
Beth Sandor: Great, yeah,
let's take a look at that demo.
I think it will help bring to life and
help people visualize some of the things
that reason I have been talking about.
So I'm going to show you the Tableau
visualization for Kern County, California,
which is in Northern California
county of about a million people.
Those community leaders have made
a commitment to end chronic homelessness
which is long term homelessness
among people with disabilities.
And this dashboard allows those
community leaders to be able to look
month over month how many people
across our county of a million people
are experiencing chronic homelessness.
Are all of these investments and
activities adding up to
fewer people experiencing homelessness
this month than last month?
And as you can see,
they have done an incredible job
over the last six months of
really driving reductions and
using this data to make
decisions about how to do that.
And I think that's the key, is that
looking at this information every single
month allows those leaders, implementors
to decide when something's working and
they should scale or double down.
Or when they need to,
something that they hypothesize would work
is not happening the way
that they expected.
And as you can see, they held under three
people experiencing chronic homelessness
for four months and
then in May of 2020 ticked up.
But this data allows them to go deeper and
really see why did it tick up, and
what levers do we need to pull.
And I think we just
talked about the bathtub.
And we think about that
as how many people and
who is coming into the system every month,
which are the purple bars on this graph.
And then who is exiting and
how many people are exiting every single
month the homeless response system.
And what do we need to do to pull those
levers to be able to drive reductions?
And as you can see here,
in November of 2018,
the little red dot at the bottom there
square lit up to tell that community,
hey inflow into homelessness
is exceeding outflow.
Something's going on here and you need to
pay attention or you're losing ground.
And then those leaders can dig in and say,
okay of the total people who came in,
21 people who came into
homelessness this month,
how many were completely
new to the system?
And how many people did we know or
house and fall out again?
And as you can see all of them
are completely new, which means the right
strategy there is partnership with
upstream institutional players to figure
out what is it going to take to keep
people from coming into the system.
And then in the same way they can
dig into outflow and say okay,
of the people that exited
the homeless response system.
How many were people we housed?
How many people disappeared?
And the strategies that community would
use to accelerate outflow would be
different, right?
If they need to work on bringing
new resources to bear and
proving the housing placement process
versus expanding outreach and
navigation that people are disappearing.
So, this is a little bit wonky, but
the point of all of it is that,
it equips community leaders and
implementors with the information they
need to know, are we designing the system
that is capable of driving reductions,
and iterate, and learn, and
create a data culture which allows
that to happen at the community level.
And our dream is that every county in
America, Has a dashboard like this
that is transparent and public and allows
them to iterate and learn but also holds
them accountable for ending homelessness
which is completely within our reach.
So if anyone wants to dig in more to
what's happening with Built for Zero,
you can check out builtforzero.org.
And we're excited to see
where this work goes next,
our communities are doing
incredible work at the local level.
I'll hand it back to you, Evany
Ebony Beckwith: Beth, that was absolutely
my next question is like how do we get
this into the hands of more people?
So you just talked about the website,
that was so powerful and
the data was so amazing.
So thank you for bringing that to life and
offering to put into the hands
of anyone who wants it.
Beth, I really appreciate you
being here with us today, and
not just speaking about
the issue of homelessness, but
really showing us the work you're doing to
solve it, and how others can get involved.
I feel very hopeful after speaking
to both you and Dame Louise.
Leah, I want to bring you back in.
Wasn't that an amazing conversation?
Leah McGowan-Hare: It was,
and you're right, Evany.
I mean, sometimes you think
about the issue of homelessness.
And it feels so overwhelming like this is
not solvable but hearing both Louise and
Beth speak about it, I feel hopeful about
it and really feel empowered to help.
And I love getting data in
the hands of the local community.
So it doesn't feel so distant, right?
I can actually go and look at the data and
say, what is the data for
my county, and
I can see how I'm impacting it.
So that's really powerful.
Ebony Beckwith: So I just want to close
by saying Dame Louise Casey, Beth Sandra,
thank you so much for
being here with us today.
And Leah, I will turn it back
over to you to close us out.
Leah McGowan-Hare: Thank you so much,
Evany, and thank you once again.
Our amazing guests Dame Louise Casey and
Beth Sandra.
You can find more about our
leading through change stories
at salesforce.com/blog.
Now before we wrap up,
one more reminder to join us in
making sure millions of people worldwide
do not go hungry during this crisis.
Now if you can,
because I know this a tough time for many.
If you can,
please go to salesforce.com/WFP and
join us in helping this organization.
Now through July 31st 2020,
we will be matching donations
up to a total of $150,000.
Again, that's salesforce.com/WFP.
Now we'll be back next week on
our leading through change,
that's Tuesday at 10 AM Pacific time.
Until then, take care of yourself and
each other.
