Improve Housing First Outcomes With a Safety-Based Skills Class

Eviction causes trauma. Returning to homelessness causes trauma. Even if Housing First has proven itself as a policy that works, there are powerful ways for us to address gaps that still exist. If we can reduce the number of clients who are evicted from subsidized housing units, we can reduce the harm caused by homeless recidivism.

People who have experienced homelessness bring a skillset that enables them to survive on the street, and they should be commended for this accomplishment. But some of those skills can undermine their efforts to establish a long rental history. In twelve years working as a case manager, I have developed a skills class that helps people avoid the pitfalls inherent to subsidized housing.

Housing Survival legitimizes the identity of a survivor. Then, without judgment, it simply adds useful tools to the toolbox that survivors already have. Tools like safety, authentic boundaries, and the development of sacred space.

Housing Survival works like preventative medicine. It acknowledges the law of the street while simultaneously emphasizing the imperative for establishing one’s home as the venue for healing.

In 45 minutes, I can remind any client or group of clients that they still retain everything required to build a meaningful life. I do this by coaching them to recognize their own personal worth, and by discussing how any apartment can be recontextualized as a source of immense power for them to heal and thrive.

By engaging with clients directly about their own value, it becomes a simple matter to discuss the types of incidents that typically lead to eviction before they happen. This is what makes Housing Survival (as a skills class) into a form of preventative case management.

When human beings live in safety, they heal. When their home is the venue for healing, it becomes sacred space to them. By reclaiming the concept of sacred space for a subculture of people who are traditionally excluded from it, all other strengths-based matters of social work (Trauma-Informed Care, Harm Reduction, Motivational Interviewing, Peer Support, Etc.) are facilitated for those we serve.

On the street, where the law is violence, no one is given permission to heal. Housing Survival goes beyond this by not merely establishing space for healing, but by helping clients to envision a setting where they can thrive also.