5 cool ideas to make navigating the city's homelessness services easier - Generocity Philly

Results

Sep. 15, 2016 1:00 pm

5 cool ideas to make navigating the city’s homelessness services easier

At our first Blueprint: Homelessness event, local service providers convened to discuss one of our city's biggest problems. Here's what they came up with.

Brainstorming at Blueprint.

(Photo by Mo Manklang)

Full Disclosure: This was updated with further event details, including the event partner and location.
Homelessness is one of the world’s wicked problems that our city may never solve.

It’s making some serious strides to do so and has a hell of a lot of nonprofit and government agencies working on different facets of the issue. But it’s difficult to know how to navigate the myriad service providers — both for those seeking help, and those working in the field who want to collaborate with others.

As one nonprofit executive director put it: If the providers don’t understand their own network, how do the people who needs its services understand it?

At our Blueprint: Homelessness event, held yesterday in partnership with social services nonprofit RHD at Pennovation Works in Southwest Philly, we convened about 60 passionate Philadelphians to brainstorm ways to better manage homelessness in our city. Spoiler: It will take a lot of coordination and a lot of money.

Here are five of the many cool ideas our attendees discussed to solve some problems within the continuum of care, either for providers or individuals.

  1. Geographical map of service providers — A map of where nearby providers’ officers are located and what services they offer, displayed at transit stops or Indego docks
  2. Hackathon with service providers, the city and university students — Providers intro small-scale problems they’re trying to solve at a city-coordinated event, and local students take the weekend to develop technological solutions
  3. A local verson of “psychs on bikes — Psychiatric professionals bike to meet people who need their services where they are — say, on a bench in Rittenhouse Square Park — to conduct a counseling session and deliver the person’s medication
  4. Homelessness risk calculator — An app or website into which anyone can enter financial information such as their salary, rent and student loans to get a picture of how easily they might become homeless in the case of, say, a major medical emergency
  5. Formal coalitions and more conversations — This is self-explanatory, but there aren’t enough formal convenings of providers. There need to be more conversations at every level of the problem.

From our Partners

-30-

From our Partners

Creating a Prosocial Emergency Shelter Culture

The problem with homelessness ‘innovation’

Donations, food and God have kept Sunday Breakfast Rescue Mission going for more than 140 years

SPONSORED

Generocity Philly

Meet Kim Andrews, new executive director for The Fund for Women and Girls

Philadelphia, PA

Fairmount Park Conservancy

Capital Projects Manager

Apply Now
Philadelphia, PA

Youth Sentencing & Reentry Project (YSRP)

Director of Development and Communications

Apply Now
Philadelphia

DiverseForce

Managing Directors: Career Pathways & Community Resiliency

Apply Now

National conversation: ‘Housing First’ approach can meet the demands of homeless union

Evictions at PATCO encampment show fragile nature of last summer’s Parkway agreement

Homelessness in reentry is a serious concern. Here’s what Philly is doing about it

SPONSORED

Generocity Philly

Be the leader to bring a 26-year mission into the future in Chester County

Hybrid (Princeton)

Young Audiences NJ and Eastern PA

Arts Education Administrator (Hybrid)

Apply Now
Philadelphia , PA

Community Legal Services

Communications and Social Media Associate

Apply Now
Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Remote, or Hybrid

Regional Housing Legal Services

Staff Attorney, Housing Development Legal Services

Apply Now
   
       
       

Subscribe to Generocity

       
* indicates required