The Systems How Nashvillians get into housing

BY HANNAH HERNER

Contributor vendor John Henry has been homeless on and off for 30 years. Given this history, it’s hard for him to get a landlord to sign him a lease, let alone pay for market rate rent in Nashville. He’s worked with a social worker, and has struggled to get a sustainable long-term option for housing. In order to get one of the city’s scarce affordable housing units, people like Henry have to show that they’re vulnerable enough to need one. And with the way the system works, living in a boarding house instead of on the streets could actually be hurting his odds.

“There are a whole lot of things that they didn’t ask me that should have been asked,” Henry says. “To help me get housing, that’s fine. But asking me the reason I don’t have housing, they didn’t ask me as much. They didn’t ask me what I could have went through trying to get housing.”

Henry remembers filling out a VI-SPDAT with a social worker. This Vulnerability Index-Service Prioritization Decision Assistance Tool is the front door to getting an affordable housing unit in Nashville. (Usually it’s referred to as the vee-eye-spi-dat).

The front door

There are three different VI-SPDATs, one for families, one for single adults, and one for youth. This tool was created to be administered quickly with 27 yes or no answers. In the end, the client will receive a score between one and 17, with 17 signifying the most vulnerable. A higher score puts a person higher on the list to get into housing. Little training is required to use it, as it’s self-reported by the client and the questions are meant to be read verbatim. It’s widely used, in more than 100 communities across the United States, and the world.

Cities must use a triage tool that measures vulnerability like this to receive federal dollars from the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development. HUD also requires that cities use a Coordinated Entry System, a process by which organizations are meant to work together to use the information collected to get people into housing.

The VI-SPDAT is broken down into four categories: history of housing and homelessness, risks (mainly of crime being committed against them), socialization and daily functioning and wellness. These categories are divided into 17 subsections. A point is added to a respondent’s score for each question that identifies them as being at higher risk.

For example, one of the risks sections asks: 1. Have you been attacked or beaten up since you’ve become homeless? 2. Have you threatened or tried to harm yourself or anyone else in the last year?

And if they answer yes to either of these, a point is added to the score for “risk of harm.”

The problem with the VI-SPDAT

A racial equity analysis released in 2019 looked at six communities’ VI-SPDAT outcomes. “VI-SPDAT subscales do not equitably capture vulnerabilities for BIPOC compared to whites: race is a predictor of 11/16 subscales, and most subscales are tilted towards capturing vulnerabilities that whites

are more likely to endorse,” the study reads.

White people are more likely to get a higher score on this vulnerability assessment than BIPOC. Higher scores help you get into housing faster.

Alaina Boyer, director of research for the National Health Care for the Homeless Council suspects this disparity is because of the self-reporting aspect of the tool. One question on the survey reads, “In the past six months, how many times have you … talked to police because you witnessed a crime, were the victim of a crime, or the alleged perpetrator of a crime or because the police told you that you must move along?”

“With our current culture, and specifically with law enforcement and those types of things we’re seeing in the Black community, people are not going to be forthcoming on questions of whether or not they had interactions with law enforcement,” Boyer says. “People are not going to want to share whether or not they talked to the police or witnessed a crime or been a victim of sexual assault or violent assault.”

Henry recalls filling out the VI-SPDAT.

“I didn’t mind answering it, but I get to the point that I hate talking about stuff like that to people because I have to tell the real truth. And the truth hurts people,” he says. “Especially when I say the police, our government, it all hurts — but it’s the truth. It’s really sad how they treat poor people”

Note that people who are Black are already disproportionately affected by homelessness. Nashville’s 2020 Point-in-Time Count (another HUD mandated measure) found that 45 percent of people experiencing homelessness that one January night were Black, yet Black people only make up 28 percent of Nashville’s general population.

Boyer says it’s the dichotomous nature of the survey that also misses ways that different cultures might communicate. And especially for drug and alcohol rehabilitation programs, it’s typically in the clients best interest to hide their vulnerabilities, she says. But with the VI-SPDAT, answering yes to question 22 “Will drinking or drug use make it difficult for you to stay housed or afford your housing?” gives a point to the vulnerability score.

“Our populations have been told for so long: don’t let them know you have this issue, so we can get you into this program. Now all of the sudden we’re coming with this screener like ‘tell us everything. You have to tell us everything because that’s going to get your score up.’ And that’s a huge conundrum.”

Another shortfall of the VI-SPDAT is that the severity of any of these categories is not reflected. Question 16, “Do you have any chronic health issues with your liver, kidneys, stomach, lungs or heart?” would garner the same answer from someone with life-threatening cancer or a mild and manageable condition.

When someone’s vulnerability score doesn’t accurately reflect their vulnerability, a social worker must go to bat for them at one of the city’s bi-weekly case conferences.

“Those are assessment tools that are not perfect,” says Judith Tackett, director of Metro’s Homeless Impact Division.“That’s why we do have care coordination meetings... where housing navigators and case managers can come and be like ‘I have somebody who is really really vulnerable and this tool didn’t measure that.’ We can advocate in those meetings on a personal level as well. You can’t just determine on paper everything about a person.”

What HMIS can and can’t get you

The VI-SPDAT is entered into a database called the Homeless Management Information System (HMIS). Going through this process can get a person experiencing homelessness a specific few things: move-in funds, one kind Section 8 rental assistance voucher, a monthly bus pass, and/or a single-room-occupancy unit (usually a refurbished motel room). And it can only get them those things if they are “literally homeless” by HUD’s definition — this doesn’t include people who are doubled up with friends or family or in danger of being evicted.

Nathan Scarlett, lead outreach worker for Mental Health Co-Op says access to these resources is crucial for his clients, especially the access to the move-in funds. He uses the database every day to help him reach his goal of housing 20 clients a year, which he says wouldn’t be possible without the VI-SPDAT and HMIS.

“I basically tell them it’s a vulnerability index. It measures how vulnerable you are living on the streets or in shelters,” Scarlett says. “It doesn’t matter

“Our populations have been told for so long: don’t let them know you have this issue, so we can get you into this program. Now all of the sudden we’re coming with this screener like ‘tell us everything. You have to tell us everything because that’s going to get your score up.’ And that’s a huge conundrum.”

what your score is, we just need to do this survey to help you to be eligible for the $1,000 of move in expenses, and also it helps you to gain more access to housing resources.”

Outside of HMIS is the whole public housing system, managed by Metropolitan Development and Housing Authority (MDHA). Akin to the process with SROs, rent is based on income. But unlike the benefits you can get through HMIS, people can apply themselves to MDHA waitlists. These waitlists stretch hundreds long, and no weight is given to people experiencing literal homelessness.

A two-year overhaul

Also outside of HMIS are a number of area homeless service providers that don’t enter into the system. Privately funded organizations don’t have to use this centralized database. Right now that means it’s not an accurate indicator of the state of homelessness in Nashville, and the resources available, but the city would like it to be.

“One major barrier that we face is completeness. [Tackett] has been in conversation with the Nashville Rescue Mission for forever, working on what it would look like, what it would take to get them on board and entering their shelter data into the system” says Rachel Cook, HMIS administrator. “The Mission is not the only one, it’s just the biggest example.”

The city of Nashville received $150,000 from HUD in October as part of a two-year grant to improve the HMIS system. Much of this money was spent on training, says Tackett. Until earlier this year, the database was closed to data sharing. Nashville is moving toward an open system, or data sharing system. That said, all of the people entered thus far, will not be open to view by the organizations, just the ones entered since the system was opened.

“The bottom line goal for all of this has been — in two years — to be able to have an open functioning system. And when it’s open it’s where we share data safely,” Tackett says.

Now organizations can pick up where another left off and share services for each others’ clients more easily.

“The whole point of HMIS is not for people to have another piece of documentation to handle and just enter their information into a black hole where it doesn’t go anywhere,” Cook says. “We’re really serious about getting it cleaned up to a place where it can be useful and we can report a lot more back out to the community.”

A more well-documented view of people receiving ser vices because they’re experiencing homelessness could be advantageous to Nashville; as could pooling services through a Coordinated Entry database.

But until there’s enough affordable housing to go around, these are the systems that one must go through to get housing. How fair can it be?