After months of planning, a local program that uses data analytics to predict and prevent homelessness is set to launch in July.
The concept is to determine what circumstances put families at high risk of losing their homes, identify families in those situations, and then intervene with financial and other assistance.
The project is being funded with $2.1 million from the City of Cincinnati through an Impact Award, a new part of the city’s annual budget humanitarian funding. The lead agency is Strategy to End Homelessness. CEO Kevin Finn says this kind of work is brand new and very expensive.
“It’s a service that’s not currently being offered, so I don’t know what it would cost-wise,” Finn told a City Council committee last week. “Instead of paying back rent, I’m hoping we can donate something to help the mother go to work. It may be a small amount, but I think it will have a long-term impact on that household.”
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The data analytics portion alone costs $500,000 a year, Finn said, and the city’s impact awards only include $100,000 a year toward that portion. The organizations have been fundraising to make up the shortfall, plus raise enough to fund the emergency assistance and case management portion.
The first forecast data set includes information from Hamilton County’s 513 Relief Program, the Central Access Point Helpline, emergency rental assistance from both the city and county, the Legal Aid Society Helpline, the Homeless Management Information System, the Shelter Diversion Program, St. Vincent de Paul service requests, and the YWCA Domestic Violence Hotline.
Every household identified will be assigned a case manager and will also receive other supports depending on their specific needs.
“We’re developing a plan for how to contact them depending on which data set the household is in,” Finn said. “Some data sets may have email addresses or mobile numbers. Other data sets may not even have a name, so we may need to reach out to the organization that provided us with the household’s data and ask them to contact the family on our behalf.”
Finn says that as the project progresses, they plan to add more data to further identify families at risk of homelessness. The second phase, scheduled for October, will include data from the Cincinnati Metropolitan Housing Authority, county arrest records, apartment complex sales and applications for services through the Free Store Food Bank.
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The second phase will also include a new idea that emerged as part of the project’s “hackathon” earlier this year: TenantGuard, which allows families to check for themselves whether they are at risk of losing their home.
The third phase of the project is scheduled for January 2025 and will draw on up to 18 other data sources.
