Could a new social services model prevent a temporary housing crisis from becoming a persistent condition?

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The Economic Roundtable’s (ERT) analytic model for homeless risk assessmentcombines emerging technological tools to systematically assess social vulnerability among people who have recently become homeless, and to target services for prevention for the people who are most prone to falling into long-term homelessness. The aim is to triage services for people at especially high risk of spiraling into persistent homelessness—particularly among youth and the working poor—to deliver the help they need before a temporary crisis becomes a permanent one.

The ERT model is based on the understanding that homelessness is not just a social problem but a social process. Social-service agencies can use the model to connect individuals to resources that provide more intense, sustained intervention than just a night in a shelter or a temporary food voucher. For some that might mean a job training program; for others, drug rehab. The model was developed against the backdrop of a roiling debate over the ethics of “predictive” social science in public policy. Social analysis can tell us a lot about how long-term homelessness happens, but can it be prevented if we can foresee it months or years in advance?

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