Homelessness Prevention Unit

Geoff Bennett: Tonight's Brief But Spectacular comes from Los Angeles, where Dana Vanderford and Fred Theus work together in the county's Homelessness Prevention Unit.

Amna Nawaz: It uses A.I.-driven data to identify people at risk of losing their home and offer support that can help prevent homelessness.

Dana Vanderford, Los Angeles Homelessness Prevention Unit: I think the general public might believe that people find themselves in the experience of homelessness because of a series of bad choices or moral failings, or that it's a choice to be in that experience of homelessness, and that isn't what we see at all from our clients.

Fred Theus, Los Angeles Homelessness Prevention Unit: I am a case manager at Homeless Prevention Unit. I support families in keeping them being housed.

Dana Vanderford: The Homeless Prevention Unit is based in Los Angeles County. We're a part of the county's Department of Health services. We find folks about a year before they might lose their housing.

Woman: Hi, this is Alexandra.

Dana Vanderford: We proactively outreach to those folks, and then we connect them with an intervention that provides them with flexible financial assistance, linkages to supportive services, and really responsive case management.

Fred Theus: Someone would need rent paid. Someone would need background pay. Someone would just need basic needs as far as like a grocery gift card, or stuff for like laundry, just little stuff here and there.

Dana Vanderford: We use A.I. or machine learning to run an algorithm on county data to identify people who might be most at risk of losing their housing in the next 12 months. Our algorithm looks at emergency room visits, arrests, crisis stabilization holds for mental health, interaction with benefits.

The model catches that and produces a high-risk list of people who might be at imminent risk of losing their housing.

Fred Theus: We make sure they don't get to that point of being homeless or being on the streets.

Dana Vanderford: Fred is one of the strongest members of our team when it comes to building rapport with clients. We always hear from our clients that they feel like they're talking to a friend when they're talking to Fred.

Fred Theus: I make my clients laugh. I make my clients at ease. I use my humor, I use my personality to definitely lower their walls, their defensive walls.

Dana Vanderford: Our program is unique because we don't just provide funds for rental assistance. Our clients have all kinds of financial needs when we first meet them.

Fred Theus: A client needed help with their son being in the sports. We were able to pay it for them.

Dana Vanderford: Although we have this sophisticated technology at the front end of our program, everything that happens from that point on is really like a human-to-human connection.

Fred Theus: One of the most rewarding moments for me is when I was able to get one of my clients a house for him and his grandkids.

Dana Vanderford: He was retired,. He had enough income to sustain himself, but a family emergency resulted in his need to now parent three young kids. This family wasn't expecting our call, but I'm so glad that we found them. And, ultimately, we were able to help this family move into a three-bedroom apartment.

Society spends a lot of time thinking about how to get people off of the streets and back into housing, and our program thinks about how to prevent people from finding themselves in those circumstances in the first place.

Fred Theus: A.I. support us to find these people in a fragile state, and we're able to support our client navigate through these crises. We're dealing with humans. We're dealing with real people.

My name is Frederick (ph) Theus.

Dana Vanderford: My name is Dana Vanderford.

Fred Theus: And this is my Brief But Spectacular take on preventing homelessness before it happens.

Amna Nawaz: And you can watch more Brief But Spectacular videos online at PBS.org/NewsHour/Brief.