Breaking Down Barriers: An Evaluation of Hennepin County's Homeless to Housing Program

Abstract

This report summarizing findings from an evaluation of Hennepin County Homeless to Housing program, which began taking client referrals in November 2021. The program provides housing-focused case management services to reach vulnerable single adults who are homeless. The purpose of our evaluation at this stage was to compare the program to other models, identify any service inefficiencies or disparities in early implementation, and present recommendations for improvement. The primary methods included a literature review, an internal document review, quantitative analysis of anonymous client referral data, and qualitative interviews with staff. Our literature review examined the best practices of case management and the efficacy of case management as a tool to increase housing placements for hard-to-reach and vulnerable populations. There are a variety of models for case management programs, but the most frequently cited were Brokerage, Strengths-Based, Assertive Community Treatment (ACT), and Intensive Case Management or (ICM). The literature also discussed the importance of determining case management models to decide other program characteristics, like caseload size. In general, the literature review found that the most effective housing outcomes came from 1) the use of Housing First principles and provision of rapid rehousing. These outcomes improved when paired with either 2) financial supports like housing vouchers or 3) case management services. The best outcomes combined all three (See for example page 17 for a case study of a similar Indianapolis program, Brown et al., 2018).