Why Homeless Services Shouldn't Work Themselves Out of Business

There is a mantra in homeless services that we should "work ourselves out of business." We have been trying to work ourselves out of business for decades, yet business is booming. Those of us who dedicate our lives to the issue of homelessness face perverse incentives. Obviously, we get into the work we do because we passionately believe that homelessness is a serious social issue. However, our careers are predicated on the prevalence of homelessness. We make a living because poverty and homelessness exist.

As long as we believe that the key to success is to "work ourselves out of business," we will fail to end homelessness. No individual or entity will knowingly work themselves out of their own livelihood. I certainly won't. I'm not saying that anyone would ever provide sub par services in order to keep a homeless client from becoming a housed former client. And it's clear that homeless services never have all the resources needed to eradicate homelessness completely. But with the goal of working ourselves out of business, we face a very real dilemma.

If the work we do is effective, homelessness decreases and so does our funding base. If the work we do is ineffective, our funding base is also at risk. Therefore, as a sector we are incentivized to make a seemingly implausible argument: that our services collectively work and that homelessness is increasing. (The fact that systemic causes of homeless are out of our hands does nothing to diminish the fact that, like any industry, we need to produce results.) We recently saw such a line of reasoning surrounding the latest Los Angeles homeless count, which reported a dramatic decrease in homeless families even as service providers report that they are inundated with needy people.

There is no other sector, non-profit nor corporate, that tries to work itself out of business. Instead, what other sectors do is evolve, adapting their organizations to meet the ever changing needs of society. Computer companies become phone manufacturers. Donut shops begin to advertise their coffee. So too should homeless services have an eye toward the future while working on today's pressing problems. For example, instead of homeless shelters going out of business, over time they should transition from providing shelter to managing affordable housing units.

If we are to end homelessness, we have to make sure our service providers have the proper incentives to do so. Working ourselves out of businesses only incentivizes us to reject statistics that do not conform to our beliefs, and to insist that our services work, whether they do as efficiently as possible or not. By changing the paradigm on which we think about homeless services from one of inevitable extinction to one of evolution, we will be better situated to meet the challenges America's families face today and tomorrow.

Photo credit: timetrax23