Early Intervention to Prevent Persistent Homelessness : Predictive Models for Identifying Unemployed Workers and Young Adults who become Persistently Homeless

Two new predictive screening tools that are based on analyzing records of over one-million people who experienced homelessness have been placed in the public domain by the Economic Roundtable. The two groups targeted by these tools are low-wage workers who have just lost their jobs and youth entering adulthood who will become persistently homelessness within the next three years. While most people in both groups don't become homeless at all or are able to get out quickly, eight percent of each group become persistently homeless.The tools are highly accurate. For the top 1% of people with the highest probability scores, the models can predict with 81% accuracy which newly unemployed workers will become persistently homeless, and with 72% accuracy which young adults will become persistently homeless, nine times more accurate than random selection.Predictive tools can solve the difficult problem of telling apart people who will be homeless only a short time and those who will be homeless a long time. These two groups look much alike at the onset of homelessness. The common face of homelessness is someone who has lived on the sidewalk for a long time, but there was a first day of homelessness for that person, when he or she was more hopeful, less damaged, and looked much like more fortunate counterparts who found early exits. These predictive screening tools can accurately tell these two types of individuals apart.This is a front-end approach that jumpstarts the current model of progressive engagement where progressively more help is given to individuals as they remain homeless longer. If individuals become chronically homeless, they are offered permanent supportive housing, if any of these scarce units are available. The new tools prevent chronic homelessness by targeting people who are most likely to stay homeless and helping them early on when there is far less economic, social, medical, and legal wreckage in their lives, and exiting homelessness costs far less