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Alleviating homelessness using technology and data. I recently learned that homelessness is not just about the people you see on the street every day, but that homelessness is in fact a funnel that people fall deeper into as their situation becomes increasingly desperate. At the bottom of the funnel are the aforementioned group known as the "chronically homeless". The top of the funnel however, looks a lot different, it consists of people who might be couch surfing with friends, sleeping in cars or moving between motels. This group is known as the "hidden homeless". We likely encounter this group every day, at work, in the coffee shop, at the gym, but they look just like you and I so we fail to recognise their situation. The "hidden homeless", at the top of the funnel, actually make up the vast majority of the homeless population. What's even more surprising is that this group overwhelmingly has access to technology, 90% have access to a smartphone or laptop with internet access. The not-for-profit organisation I am involved with called Ample Labs (www.amplelabs.co) is working on developing chatbots to more rapidly connect this group with essential services. This allows us to get a better understanding of their behaviours, what services they use and how effective they are. This has two benefits - first by connecting the 'hidden homeless' with essential services quickly, we make it less likely that they will fall further down the funnel into chronic homelessness; secondly, it provides us with essential data that we share with cities to inform policy making. The long term hope, is that by using data to prevent at-risk populations from falling deeper into homelessness we can combat the problem at its source and start to eliminate homelessness before it even begins. |
Homelessness is a topic I know embarrassingly little about. What has the data led you to recommend to cities, policy-wise?
It seems like large-scale data collection should be (but isn't) used to inform many public policy decisions. Another area where I think data could have a huge impact is studying how the punishments that criminals are served in court affects their outcomes later in life, and requiring judges to factor that data into their verdicts.