How best to use your money to help the homeless
POST STATUS: DRAFT (more work needed to finish this, however it's being put into the public domain anyway -- if you have any insights that could help finish this off, please contact me on sanjay@sogive.org)
Worrying about the plight of the homeless is normal for those of us who pass by beggars frequently.
This post is for those who have decided to help the homeless by donating rather than volunteering. (This begs the question of whether it is better to help by donating or volunteering, but answering that question is outside of the scope of this post)
Some questions:
(1) Is it a good idea to give money to people asking for it on the street?
(2) If I decide to donate to a homelessness charity, which should I choose?
For question (1) see separate blog post (not yet published, so here's the link to the draft: https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1644983150805984491#editor/target=post;postID=1904631950083517956;onPublishedMenu=allposts;onClosedMenu=allposts;postNum=9;src=link)
Question (2)
2 key angles on this question:
(A) is it best to just give people cash? (answer is probably yes)
(B) is it best to just give homeless people a home (evidence exists to say yes)
(A) is it best to just give people cash? (The GiveDirectly challenge / Personalised budgets)
In the international development arena, the charity GiveDirectly has made waves by questioning whether beneficiaries are helped more when aid workers decide how aid funds are spent, or when beneficiaries are simply given the cash to decide for themselves.
This suggests that the same challenge could be posed for helping homeless people closer to home.
Something like this has been tried -- it's been referred to as the "personalised budgets" model, where the spend on each beneficiary is determined by what the beneficiary thinks is best (i.e. it's personalised).
On balance, I suspect that homelessness charities probably fail the GiveDirectly challenge (i.e. personalised budgets is better), although I don't have enough evidence to say this with confidence. Here's some arguments in favour of believing this:
- The cost per beneficiary is roughly the same [A1]
- The impact per beneficiary is unclear (both for personalised budgets and other interventions) however it seems to be probably better for personalised budgets [A2]
A reason for thinking that I might be wrong here is that a charity called Broadway tried the personalised budgets model in around 2009-2010, and as far as I can tell, this model is not being followed now. This might be because evidence has found it to not work, or it could be for other reasons.
(B) is it best to just give homeless people a home (the Housing First model)
The traditional approach to tackling homeless involves recognising that homelessness is a complex problem that is also linked to other problems such as addiction or mental health, and tackling those first before granting beneficiaries access to housing, perhaps putting people into temporary housing or hostels while those issues are being sorted out.
The Housing First model was trialled in New York in the 1990s, and evidence seems to indicate that the Housing First model is more cost-effective based on studies in the US and some European countries. As far as I can tell, I'm struggling to find good evidence for this working well in the UK. It's unclear to what extent this is context/culture dependent (i.e. if it's worked one place, how likely is it to work in another?) <NOTE: Need to do more thorough review of the evidence>
The Housing First model does not require beneficiaries to have successfully completed some rounds of treatment (or to have "passed tests") before being granted housing -- instead it rests on the belief that secure housing is part of the solution.
A reason to doubt whether the Housing First model really is the most effective model is the lack of longer term studies. (P174 of this literature review alludes to the absence of long term studies)
If you were convinced by this model, the best UK-based charity to support would probably be Homeless Link, which backs the Housing First England project.
See further reading section below for more on this.
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Footnotes/references/further reading:
(A) is it best to just give people cash?
(A) Footnotes
[A1] The cost per beneficiary is roughly the same
- The one study that I've found of personalised budgets involved spending £794 per recipient. To be precise, the set aside a budget of £3,000 per person, and asked them what they would like to have bought for them, and the average cost came to £794 per person.
- It seems other homelessness interventions easily spend the same amount per beneficiary, if not more. Examples from the SoGive database show that Crisis might spend around £8m-£9m helping just over £8,000 people with education, health and wellbeing (which might involve mental health coaching, classes, or courses), or that Shelter might spend almost £50m providing face to face advice and support service to 70,000 + another 100,000 phone calls to support people. These figures seem to suggest spending of around a few hundred to a thousand pounds per person. For St Mungos, the cost per person seems to be higher, if anything (even after defraying the costs paid for by the homeless person themselves)
[A2] The impact per beneficiary is unclear however it seems to be better for personalised budgets
- Homelessness charities don't tend to publish impact reports which run comprehensively through each of their interventions together with a rigorous assessment of whether it's worked, however they do talk about the complex needs of their beneficiary group, and other indications that they consider the work to be intractable and difficult. This is suggestive (but far from conclusive) that most of the work achieves little.
- The study of personalised budgets found that of the 13 who took part in the study, 11 of them moved into accommodation, and this seems to have worked out well for 6 of those people over the longer term, suggesting an almost 50% success rate.
- The argument in favour of user involvement seems strong a priori, which should nudge us towards the personalised budgets model
https://www.jrf.org.uk/sites/default/files/jrf/migrated/files/supporting-rough-sleepers-full.pdf
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/free-money-might-be-the-best-way-to-end-poverty/2013/12/29/679c8344-5ec8-11e3-95c2-13623eb2b0e1_story.html?utm_term=.6be6a218559f
https://thecorrespondent.com/541/why-we-should-give-free-money-to-everyone/20798745-cb9fbb39
https://www.economist.com/node/17420321
(B) is it best to just give homeless people a home
A good source is the Evaluation of Pathways to Housing PA by Fairmount Ventures (emailed to me on 31-oct-2017). P37 has all the good stuff. (it's also quoted in their annual report: https://issuu.com/pathwaystohousingpa/docs/14-15_pth_annual_report_issuu)
Centre for Social Justice comes out strongly in favour of Housing First as well: https://www.centreforsocialjustice.org.uk/core/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/CSJJ5157_Homelessness_report_070317_WEB.pdf
https://www.crisis.org.uk/media/20499/staircases_elevators_and_cycles_of_change2010.pdf
Homeless Link has some info about this: https://www.homeless.org.uk/sites/default/files/site-attachments/Housing%20First%20or%20Housing%20Led.pdf
A general look around the Crisis knowledge hub can also be useful: https://www.crisis.org.uk/ending-homelessness/homelessness-knowledge-hub/
There's some value in looking at the case for the what works centre for homelessness: http://www.evaluationsupportscotland.org.uk/media/uploads/ending_homelessness_faster_by_focusing_on_%27what_works%27.pdf
Literature review of Housing First model:
http://www.feantsa.org/download/article-7-2604393509181925066.pdf