A Hand for the Homeless
A Hand for the Homeless
An IT Solution for Those in Need
C-Team Solutions
“The missing piece”
C-Team Solutions
“The missing piece”
To: Ayala Cnaan, IT Futures Foundation
From: C-Team Solutions, CEO: Courtney A. Hughes
RE: Final Social Advocacy Project
Date: 04.29.03
-T.Banker, R. Devito, O. Lekander, E. Mattaroccia, U. Rahman, J. Silver, F. Smith, R. Soberano, F. Tampasis-
Table of Contents
I. / Abstract / p. 3II. / Background / p. 3
III. / Problem Definition / p. 5
IV. / Proposed Solution / p. 6
V. / Stakeholder Analysis / p. 9
VI. / Technical Description / p. 11
VII. / Implementation Plan / p. 16
VIII. / Resource Request / p. 17
IX. / Utilized Resources / p. 19
X. / Field Research / p. 20
I. Abstract
In our society, there is currently a lack of coordination between homeless shelters and other establishments geared towards helping the homeless. C-Team Solutions recognizes this inefficient utilization of existing establishments. In response to the problem, we have designed and developed an Information System to be implemented inBoston, MA. The goal of this implementation is to maximize the efficiency in which food pantries, shelters, and volunteer organizations of Boston’s community work together to promote and better achieve improvement of life for the homeless.
Thorough stakeholder analyses, field research, and development/design of the framework for such a system is produced. The system involves all of the user groups, in addition to those who indirectly and directly affect the relationship amongst food pantries, homeless shelters, and volunteer organizations.
II. Background
Homelessness is a global issue that is forever going to plague society, to a certain extent. Far too many individuals and families are suffering from a lack of food, clothing, shelter, and hygiene. These are the basic and essential components in sustaining life. Abraham Maslow is a famous psychologist and came up with a tier of five needs in the 1960s. According to Maslow, one requires adequate food and shelter in order to accomplish or achieve most other things in life, including finding love, finding a sense of belonging, and feeling proud about oneself (connect.net). Therefore, these indigent people are essentially “stuck”, as they do not have such necessities.
Poor people are faced with an uncomfortable situation. They must decide which necessities are most important for they are not able to afford them all. Overall poverty has actually decreased in recent years, but there has been an increase in extreme poverty. The continuance of poverty remains due to major factors of diminishing opportunities for unemployment and the unavailability and decline of public assistance.
Diminishing work opportunities are becoming apparent throughout our nation. With declining wages, prospects for purchasing houses are retreating. The job market does not look too promising in the future. A 1998 study approximated that 46% of jobs between 1994 and 2005 would pay less than $16,000 per year. Families will have an extreme difficulty raising their standards of living with this in line for the future. As a result, for Americans, work does not supply an escape from poverty.
A decline in public assistance has helped in the increase of poverty in our nation. Thirty-seven percent of impoverished families had their welfare benefits reduced in the last year according to the Institute for Children and Poverty study. There has been a reduction in public assistance, especially for poor, single people. Some states have gone so far as to have eliminated General Assistant offers for the impoverished, single individuals.
Other factors that may contribute to homelessness are a lack of affordable healthcare and mental illness. For families that are having financial trouble, a serious injury to a member of their family may drive them to poverty level. Data collected in 2000 showed there to be 38.7 million Americans without health insurance. One third of impoverished people had no health insurance of any sort. In 2001, an estimated twenty-two percent of the single, homeless population experienced severe and constant mental illness. These individuals have trouble gaining access to housing and management services.
In 2001, 11.7 percent of the U.S. lived in poverty. Of this, 16.5% of these people live in urban city areas. Research found that 37% of all requests for emergency shelter were unmet. Family studies show there to be an even larger number, 52%, of unmet wishes. Homeless people are constantly exceeding the amount of spaces available in emergency shelters and transitional housing spaces. A poll of how many people are homeless does not exist. A good approximation of poverty in the U.S. is 3.5 million people. Of that, 1.35 million are children. Children are notably the most impoverished group over any other group.
Currently, there is a wide range of programs and services in place in an effort to help alleviate the hardships these people suffer from. Although these offerings are widespread and numerous, the efficiency with which they are run and maintained is often not maximized, resulting in programs and services that are not utilized to their utmost potential.
III. Problem Definition
Presently, Information Technology is scarce regarding efforts towards social advocacy. Although there is an exorbitant amount of time, money, and effort spent on improving the lives of the homeless, there are more efficient means of doing so. The common motivational phrase “Work smarter, not harder” captures the situation best.
Within the Boston, Massachusetts area, there have been a plethora of shelters and food pantries established for the betterment of the lives of the homeless. Unfortunately, these organizations are not run and maintained to maximum capacity, from the perspective of several of the stakeholders involved, from the homeless themselves, to the employees of such establishments, to investors and government agencies.
In Boston during 1990, 10.7% of Massachusetts’ population was below the poverty line. By 1998, the United States Conference of Mayors report counted 1,940 shelter beds, 1,100 family shelter beds, sixty-seven transitional units, and 530 family transitional units in the city of Boston. Although this sounds beneficial to the impoverished, statistics taken in December 2001 for its annual census counted 6,001 homeless people, with approximately 270 individuals sleeping outdoors. On a typical night in the summertime, Boston has as many as six hundred people on the street.
A lack of affordable housing has become a crisis in the Boston area. “A national HUD study reported that Massachusetts had the highest increase in home costs, 45 %, over the past five years" (Menino). One-half of the homeless work full-time jobs yet are still unable to obtain reasonably priced housing. The central intake unit for families residing in Boston is Department of Transitional Assistance's Boston Housing Unit. The Department of Transitional Assistance denies or turns away over sixty-five percent of the families applying for shelter. Over 1300 families (including nearly 3000 children) are now being sheltered each night through the Commonwealth's Emergency Assistance Family Shelter (EA) program.
Programs have been implemented to provide assistance to these underprivileged individuals. The National Honor Society is an organization that is dedicated to helping out their surrounding communities. On their website, there is a list of activities one can get involved in. These activities promote the younger generation to get involved with helping out their own neighborhoods. The Haley House is a Catholic organization in Boston that works to “minister the needs of society’s forgotten people.” One can participate in such things as working at a soup kitchen to help the poor, and prepare foods for the unfortunate, elderly people. Homes and Communities is a division of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. It lists a number of shelters in Boston along with the details of community rooms, total capacity, types of services, restrictions, and what referrals are needed. Hotlines are provided for housing, food, health, and job opportunities. The Boston.com Yellow Pages gives people information about the locations of shelters and where to call for further information. Directions are provided along with a map consisting of nearby places. We, as C-Team Solutions, feel that we will be able to implement a more efficient information system to supply the impoverished of the Boston area with the information they need to get help in order to remove these individuals from the streets and into emergency and residential housing.
Problems with accommodations availability, overcrowding, inventory, and the coordination of volunteered efforts are far too common and complex for the existing solutions which do not incorporate IT. With the implementation of an Information System, such efforts will be integrated into a single database, providing a more usable, accessible, and efficient tool to aid the homeless of the Boston area.
IV. Proposed Solution
The foundation of our solution lies in a database with a web interface, allowing all stakeholders to have the pertinent information relevant to their involvement in the system. The solution system will encapsulate all shelters, food pantries, and volunteer organizations in the greater Boston area, allowing them to foster working relationships and open lines of communication amongst one another.
The design of the system will be very basic and user-centered. Each stakeholder will have a personalized portion of the system designed for him/her in order to ensure effectiveness. The system (computers and web-design) will not need much besides the pertinent hardware/software. Once we get the simple computer consoles into the various locations we can implement the web-based database and supplementary services. By providing a more direct and up to date method of interaction between these stakeholders, we hope to increase the efficiency and quantity of their services. The database will be a privatized implementation, available only to those parties that are members. The site, however, will still be publicly accessible in order to help circulate information about the system and accumulate volunteers and capital through donations.
The components of the system will include, but are not limited to, the following:
1) Accommodations Availability
The database will store a list of accommodations and vacancies within shelters, organizations, and other housing residences involved with our system. This information should not only help solve problems during high traffic times, but should also help prevent overloading from even occurring. Using this service, overloaded shelters can dispatch certain individuals to other nearby shelters instead of turning them away altogether. Shelters will also, however, be able to distribute persons to areas where there are more vacancies thus maintaining a more overall uniform level of accommodation. Transportation will be in the form of vans that we own and operate. Updates to these lists will be performed at least once a day to prevent confusion and misdirection of placement of persons in need.
2) Inventory tracking
The parties in the system will have access to information about supply quantities (food, clothing, medicine) at other locations. This will allow for distribution when deficits occur and the ability for any shelter to get larger amounts of aid in dire circumstances (i.e. unforeseen tragedies or weather problems which would increase influx of homeless and similar individuals to shelters and food pantries). Transportation of supplies can be carried in the vehicles described above. With constant examination of inventory, outreach workers can closely watch supply amounts, so they know when to order more provisions. This component of the system could also be implemented such that the inventory tracking system was directly connected with distributors so supplies could quickly or automatically be ordered when the time came. Inventory updates would occur no fewer than once a week.
3) Volunteer and donation accessibility
A web-based timetable will be implemented within the system that would allow individuals and organizations to sign up for volunteer time at any of the locations on our database. Volunteers will be given choice of location but they will be assigned to specific shelters if the necessity arises. The system will also allow individuals and groups to make charitable donations towards the efforts of our cause. Those that donate to the system will be recognized on the site. We will also accept volunteers that wish to assist with the maintenance and revision of the system.
4) Advertisement Services
Available within our web-interfaced plan will be space for companies to place marketing advertisements. In exchange for these endorsement spaces, we will accept monetary collateral, human resources (volunteering), or any other helpful resources to assist our cause. Advertising will be limited to the public area of the site and restricted in size. Heavy corporate influence will not be tolerated and such companies will be removed from the site or not accepted.
5) Transportation Services
Our solution will also provide information pertaining to transportation services. Route direction, arrival and departure times for services such as the Red Cross, Public Transportation, and the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority would be provided to the temporary residents. The goal behind this information is to give supplementary service to shelter residents which would help them reach health services and jobs.
6) Hospital & Healthcare Services
For those individuals within the involved organizations who need medical help, our solution will have listings and schedules of available services at hospitals, and other healthcare institutes. We will attempt to provide all individuals with contact to quality healthcare providers regardless of their insurance or similar standing. The aim will be toward low-cost moderate quality establishments that will assist or possibly partner with locations on our system. Services for other specific needs will also be included on the system (i.e. services helping victims of substance abuse).
7) Education & Related Services
Women and men who have been out of mainstream life for many years - or never had a chance to participate at all -often need support and coaching to develop workplace etiquette and a professional appearance.The system will have a list of courses in these arenas and other educational opportunities (basic education (reading, writing, math), English as a Second Language (ESL), speech improvement, etc. Offering a diverse set of educational services should help each individual to meet her/his needs.
8) Employment
The site will also house a section with a directory of job training courses offered and available counseling sessions; times and locations will be provided. (See the transportation section for more info on assisting individuals with travel.) An index of employment opportunities will be accessible too. With the information about the skills of a person searching for employment, the system will locate the best occupational matches. An important goal here is to assist homeless persons in striving toward self-sufficiency. This will open spaces in the shelters for others in need to enter.
9) Transition Assistance
This component provides individuals with information about the "next step" in moving from homelessness, substance abuse, and unemployment into permanent housing, long-term sobriety, and stable employment. Information about peer counseling will be provided to help these citizens (re) join society with normal lifestyles.
10) (Re) Connection Services
The system will also have a component to (re)connect homeless persons with their families, friends, and other contacts. Through use of internet ‘people searching’ sites and other sources, our system will attempt to (re)associate homeless individuals with relations. It has been shown that connection to these people can more rapidly help the homeless graduate to normal life.
We reiterate that the web-based interface will be simplistic in that its design and presentation will be user-friendly. It will essentially have two faces, one for the homeless and caretakers, and another for other stakeholders (see below for Stakeholder Analysis). Both groups of people need to have access to different types of information and will be able to do so through use of this system. There will be links for all of the different stakeholder categories so that extraneous and irrelevant information is not presented to those who do not require such information. Personalization to each stakeholder should improve efficiency and display positive results. We will constantly collect data on the system and repeatedly encourage feedback from all users with the vision of future improvements to all aspects of our site. Homelessness cannot be 'cured' simply by creating affordable housing and jobs. Most homeless people are victims of dysfunctional families and abusive relationships. Many are alcoholics, drug addicts, or mentally ill. Their problems are personal, rather than solely economic, and require solutions that address their relational and spiritual needs.