Last week, while visiting with our major partners, our good friend and MDHA CoC board member, Ellen Magnis, President and CEO of Family Gateway, shared some fascinating data with us.
Ellen Magnis
In 2018, we launched our Homeless Crisis Helpline, as part of MDHA’s Coordinated Access System (CAS). It helps connect persons needing help with the correct resource that matches their needs. Calls into MDHA’s system are routed to access points, depending on the specific needs of the person who calls in. Family Gateway is the access point for persons 18 or older with a child under the age of 18.
Family Gateway fielded 4,800 calls through the Homeless Crisis Help Line or via walk-ins during 2018.
- 1,400 callers were helped immediately with referral to an appropriate resource. 3,400 families received a preliminary screening to determine the urgency of their needs and eligibility for services. Non-urgent families were given a resource packet and asked to call if situation changed. They focused on those in most urgent need.
- More than 1,600 deeper assessments were completed (with some families receiving multiple assessments).
- More than half of those assessments led to a diversion from shelter, with families served by:
- Returning them to an originating city where they had a stronger network of support.
- Negotiating with a landlord not to evict a family.
- Negotiating with family members to take their relatives in/back in.
- Coming up with their own solutions (self-resolved).
- About 700 families were determined to need emergency shelter and were placed in one of our family-serving shelters (Salvation Army, Center of Hope, Dallas Life, or Family Gateway), or placed in an overflow status. 120 families needed a short hotel stay while waiting for shelter space or resolving their homeless situation through another mechanism.
- Approximately 50% of our adult population served has a history of domestic violence; 25% have a documented disability; 77% are African American.
- Family Gateway is responsible for placement of >75% of the families on the Housing Priority List via Coordinated Assessment.
- More than half of those assessments led to a diversion from shelter, with families served by:
Ellen shared one interesting caveat with us. Though Family Gateway operated the access point for all of 2018, it was, for the first half of the year, in “soft launch” mode. This means that we had yet to publicize it, and we were using that period to test it, and work through “kinks” in the system. Family Gateway saw a marked spike in the number of calls received once we entered “hard launch”, when we publicized the number far and wide. We probably will need to wait until, at least July to establish a base line for what a year of calls really looks like.
