This system is supposed to help people in crisis find housing. It’s broken, many say

People hoping to find housing through Pierce County’s one-and-only list for homeless services often find themselves in a cycle of waiting, during which they are encouraged to find their own solutions.

Some people who work closely with that system, known as Coordinated Entry’s priority pool list, say that it is overburdened — with thousands of people waiting indefinitely to receive services.

Valorie Crout works for Associated Ministries, one of several organizations entrusted by the county to manage the Coordinated Entry system. Crout said the system has the capacity to take in about half of the estimated 1,100 people who enter homelessness on a monthly basis in Pierce County.

Across the Coordinated Entry system, a limited number of case workers is available to help the thousands of people who need help navigating the patchwork of services, leaving many unhoused.

Coordinated Entry is a system required by the The Department of Housing and Urban Development, “based on evidence” that crisis response systems such as coordinated entry improve efficiency, increase fairness and create “ease of access” to resources with a system of care. Service organizations contracted by the county are required to use it.

Crout said navigating the Coordinated Entry system can be “overwhelming” and “cumbersome.” Many users describe the system as confusing, based on feedback collected in a recent survey.

“Not having that hands-on support is really a disservice,” Crout told The News Tribune in an interview.

Even with more staff to help screen and navigate people through Coordinated Entry, Crout said, the lack of housing opportunities would still slow down the system.

An endless wait for many

According to data from Pierce County’s Human Services department, Coordinated Entry had an average annual operating cost of about $1.6 million from 2017 to 2021. Spending on the program dipped during the first two years of the pandemic from more than $1.769 million spent in 2019 to less than $1.137 million in 2020 due to COVID impacts.

The county made huge investments in Coordinated Entry beginning in 2022 by making spending more than $3.426 million over the next 18 months. According to to Human Services communications coordinator Jordan Chames, the county made available $1.9 million in federal dollars from the American Rescue Plan Act during that time frame.

Folks in need of housing or services because they are homeless or fleeing domestic violence can enter the Coordinated Entry system a number of ways. They can call a 211 hot line with availability from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. on weekdays; use online resources; be contacted by an outreach specialist on the street; or visit one of seven locations in the county, all of which are in Tacoma.

Homeless people who call Coordinated Entry and need a long-term solution are put into a “priority pool” list. People who are living on the street or in a shelter can wait months before being referred to a housing solution, and some never receive one.

During the April 24 meeting of Pierce County Council’s Select Committee on Homelessness, Devon Isakson, social service supervisor for Pierce County, said on any given day, thousands of people could be waiting in the priority pool to be referred to housing.

She estimated that 1,500 to 2,000 people were on that list.

During the same meeting, a Coordinated Entry specialist who helps people navigate the system said there are fewer than 50 housing referral openings a month.

Because of the limited availability of housing referrals, the priority pool list is not a first come, first served system. Instead, priority is based on the assessed vulnerability of people entering the system.

A “vulnerability score” is given to people based on an assessment. Isakson said during the meeting that people on the priority pool list can be “displaced” by others with higher vulnerability scores.

A frequently-asked-question page regarding Coordinated Entry from Associated Ministries states, “We don’t have the waitlist information, and we can’t tell you your position on the list. If you qualify for an available spot, a referral may be sent, but it’s not guaranteed.”

Coordinated Entry specialist with Associated Ministries, Teona Kelley, told the Select Committee on Homelessness that one agency is responsible for choosing who gets referred to housing from the priority pool list and that it does not tell clients which agency it is because it would be “flooded” with calls from people wanting to know when they can expect to get housing.

“There are some people that will never come up for that referral,” Kelley said about her experience helping people through the system.

There also is a 90-day period during which people on the list are expected to find their own housing solutions with little help from case managers. When the 90-day period is over, they check in with a Coordinated Entry staff member to assess if they have found a solution or if they need to be put back onto the list.

Service providers associated with the system said it can sometimes feel like an endless cycle, with many not receiving much more help than they would have gotten if they never placed in the priority pool.

During the committee meeting, Kelley recalled a clinet that had died while waiting for housing on the list. She said the individual used a wheelchair, and there was limited availability of housing providers that could accommodate.

Vulnerability Scores

Case managers have noticed patterns in vulnerability scores based on what kinds of people receive housing referrals before others. Crout said case workers and intake staff are intentionally not informed about what factors make a higher vulnerability score because it is presumed that they would be able to manipulate intake information to get their clients into housing before others.

According to Associated Ministries, the answers someone gives during the intake-screening interview are fed into a computer algorithm that determines the score.

On April 24, Pierce County social service supervisor Delmar Algee told the committee that is why it is so important to get the right information during initial assessments. If they do not get the full picture, it can “affect their journey in the homelessness system” and their likelihood of getting housing, Algee said.

“The idea is to serve folks that are most in need and the most vulnerable,” Isakson said.

In an interview with The News Tribune, Isakson said the county does not share the scoring metric, but factors like age, whether folks have physical or mental disabilities, and their likelihood of becoming homeless again have an impact.

Isakson said the priority pool list changes on a daily basis as new people are assessed and entered into the system. She said the organization that handles referrals to housing tries to get the most vulnerable folks in the first housing option they are eligible for.

When asked if there were certain demographics that were given less priority, and as a result typically waited longer on the list, Isakson said the Human Services department aims to make it fair for everyone.

“We do analyze demographics to make sure its equitable,” Isakson said.

Crout said the previous system used to work to house the “easiest” individuals before the more vulnerable clients with more complex needs. While the current system has shifted to benefit the most vulnerable, it still pairs the those people with the first open housing availability — and not the one that best fits their needs.

Michael Yoder, executive director for Associated Ministries, said because the most vulnerable people on the list are quickly placed into the first available referral, they can be pigeonholed into something where they might not be the most successful. He advocated for a system that better assesses the needs of individuals and finds resources that better fit those needs.

Carlos Garcia is director of Youth and Young Adults Services for Tacoma Community House’s REACH Center. During the April 24 committee meeting, Garcia suggested making a separate priority pool just for youth because of the high number of young people at-risk of homelessness.

Garcia said that youth and adults in the system have “very different needs” despite being mixed together in the same priority pool for housing.

As required by U.S. Dept. of Housing and Urban Development, it mandates the use of the Homeless Management Information System (HMIS), which attempts to keep a “by-name list” of every individual and the services they are utilizing.

In an interview with The News Tribune, Steve Decker, CEO of Family Promise of Pierce County, a group that has worked to help 53 families into housing since the beginning of 2023, said the county’s system is “archaic,” designed to collect data from individuals that meet federal requirements. He said that those data points are rigid and do not always give proper context to the situations and needs of people in crisis.

Decker developed his own client management system to “remove barriers” he felt that the current system imposes on individuals and families in crisis. The system he developed in a matter of months uses artificial intelligence to keep clients updated on their progress and in touch with their service providers through the process.

Diversion

Before people enter the priority pool list, Coordinated Entry has a “diversion” step, which aims to keep people from being homeless by offering them help before it happens when possible.

During the April 24 committee meeting, Isakson said that diversion takes an individualized approach to offering a creative solution to someone on the verge of homeless. Diversion could be a one-time offering of funds to get legal help to prevent an eviction or a security deposit to secure a new apartment.

Yoder said that sometimes a diversion is as simple as paying for a plane ticket so someone can go live with family out of state.

According to data reported by Human Service, 38 percent of people in Coordinated Entry successfully exited homelessness through diversion in 2023, with 45 percent doing so up to this point in 2024.

Yoder said he believes that if the Coordinated Entry system had more capacity to contact and take in a higher volume of people, presumably there would be more chances for diversion with the success rates it has already recorded.

A state of emergency?

“We believe in what Coordinated Entry is trying to do,” Yoder told The News Tribune. “The problem is that that front door is only half as wide as it really should be.”

Yoder said the system is over-burdened and even if there were more staff to screen people into the system and case managers to help them through, there still is not enough housing opportunities to help the thousands of homeless and housing-unstable people find long-term solutions in Pierce County.

In an interview with the News Tribune, Isakson said she felt that Coordinated Entry was “staffed appropriately,” with housing referral opportunities being the limiting factor.

“We need to think more holistically,” Yoder said of the problem.

Crout, who during the April 24 Select Committee on Homelessness Meeting suggested the county council declare an emergency in response to the homelessness crisis, compared the current state of the issue to a “forest fire” that our communities are scrambling to put out.

She said it was not fair to point at a system like Coordinated Entry as the problem, as the homelessness crisis in her eyes is symptomatic of other failures our community has had when it comes to social safety nets, healthcare and housing affordability.

“We as a community have to figure out how we got here,” Crout told The News Tribune.