Dozens of children laughed and yelled on a near-West Side daycare’s jungle gym Friday morning, absorbing as much playtime as they could before the blazing summer sun rose the temperature into triple-digits.
Melissa Smith heard the faint ringing of bells and the growing din of heavy machinery as her two-year-old daughter Claire played at the YMCA Harvey E. Najim Childcare Center.
Claire was just 18 months old when she, her mother and their cat Misty were evicted from their home and they started living at Haven for Hope, San Antonio’s largest shelter and resource hub for people experiencing homelessness.
“Here comes the train,” Smith said, as a Union Pacific cargo train barrelled past, less than a block away from the fenced-in daycare.
The childcare center is just one of the dozens of on-campus services offered at Haven for Hope. While Haven’s proximity to the train tracks can interrupt peaceful moments and traffic to and from the shelter, Smith said she and most of kids enjoy it. They screamed with delight, seemingly trying to match the train’s volume as it passed.
Smith and her daughter were among the 253 families living in shelters during the annual San Antonio/Bexar County annual point-in-time count in January.
The 2023 count, which deployed hundreds of nonprofit staff and volunteers to survey people experiencing homelessness, found a 28% increase in families living in shelters compared to last year’s snapshot.
In 2016, Haven adopted a policy to never turn a family with children away. That means lobbies and conference rooms often double as large bedrooms with mats scattered around the floor at night. Roughly 300 children currently live at the shelter with their parents or guardians.
In September, Smith was a single mother working 14-hour food service shifts at Six Flags, but she could not find an affordable service to look after her baby while she worked.
So she called several shelters, all of which said they didn’t have any room until she called Haven, she said. “I’m not taking my daughter on the streets. … Haven for Hope was the only one to help and they actually sent their outreach program to come pick us up.”
Homeless mitigation advocates have attributed the local uptick in family homelessness to fading federal funding and emergency policies that kept families housed during the coronavirus pandemic — such as the eviction moratorium. More families who were living on the edge were pushed out of their homes.
The point-in-time count, which the federal government requires from communities, is an imperfect snapshot measurement giving an annual look at overall trends in the local homeless population.
To get a better picture of the unhoused community’s needs and identify trends in demographics, more real-time data and analysis is required, local advocates agree.
While a community-wide effort to better track data is being led by South Alamo Regional Alliance for the Homeless (SARAH), Haven for Hope has also hired an in-house data scientist and researcher for the first time to improve its measuring capabilities and help inform strategic decisions.
“We want to make sure that we’re building up the right partnerships for the future,” said Kim Jefferies, president and CEO of Haven.
Data-driven pivots
Haven is on track to serve a record amount of families this year, said Ryan Orsinger, who was hired in October 2022 to serve as director of data science and research at Haven.
The campus saw a total of 440 families come through Haven at various points last year, Orsinger said. This year, they’re on pace to see that number climb significantly.
“So far in the first six months, we’re at 306 families,” he said.
While families’ stays at Haven can range from days or weeks to years, the average length of stay overall 4.5 months, a downward trend, Orsinger said.
Orsinger was hired to look for patterns and trends in demographics and analyze program outcomes to get a better look at what works and for whom, Jefferies said.
“We want to be data-informed,” she said. “We don’t want to just build strategy out of thin air.”
Recently, Orsinger found that there also are more young adults between the ages of 18 and 25 coming to Haven.
“That conversation has led — very rapidly — to developing new programming … with dedicated young adult case management [and] dedicated physical space,” he said.
Starting in August, there will be 24 beds specifically for young adults in Haven’s low-barrier shelter known as the Courtyard, an indoor space that does not require sobriety or participation in case management for people to stay there overnight. There will also be 28 beds and a common area reserved for young adults inside the Transformational Campus, which requires a negative drug and alcohol test and additional paperwork for entry.
Pivoting resources based on data requires patience, Orsinger said.
“I’m looking for really clear, identifiable trends,” he said. “And if something’s a … blip, there might be another explanation [or event] rather than a trend change.”
As part of a recent more than $14.5 million grant from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, Haven will hire additional staff and purchase software for the Homeless Management Information System (HMIS). Microsoft Power BI, an interactive data visualization software, will allow organizations and agencies to dive deeper into their own demographic and outcome data while also giving a system-wide view.
For organizations that can’t afford to hire a data analyst, the additional technological and personnel tools provided by the grant will be helpful, said Katie Vela, executive director of SARAH.
HMIS is used to record and analyze client, service and housing data for individuals and families who are homeless or at risk of homelessness. It’s often used to track clients who apply for or use services from several different agencies.
SARAH is also working on a comprehensive regional data dashboard that will be used to monitor system and agency performance metrics, Vela said. That will ultimately be reviewed monthly with city, county and state partners to see where investments are being made and identify gaps.
While SARAH already has an annual process to review the homelessness response and prevention and a scorecard to monitor agencies that receive federal funding, these improvements will allow each agency in the system to use the same performance metrics and definitions, she said.
“Upstream coordination around [homelessness] prevention is one of the key pieces so that we don’t have the same inflow of families into shelter,” Vela said. “Because we know we’re at capacity.”
‘Put in the work’
A lack of affordable housing is the leading cause of homelessness, Vela said, but there are a wide range of factors — “every circumstance is unique.”
For Smith and her daughter, it was childcare. For another family, it might be falling into medical debt after a car accident.
There is no time limit for families or individuals to move out of housing at Haven, Smith said, “as long as we’re following the programs [and] minding our Ps and Qs.”
Some families have been kicked out of the shelter for fighting, she said, but “we keep to ourselves to stay out of the drama.”
Haven residents can take classes about parenting, budgeting and other life skills.
The shelter will help you “if you’re willing to put in the work,” she said, before pulling her long blonde hair, still damp from a shower, into a ponytail.
Smith was getting ready for her job at the San Antonio Zoo. She was recently hired as a cook for $15 per hour, and she recently connected two other mothers who live near her room at Haven to get jobs there as cashiers.
It’s an hour-long bus ride to the zoo, which is less than five miles away, but the daycare she qualifies for at the YMCA allows Smith to work from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. five days a week.
“It really fell into place,” said Smith, who is waiting for her application for public housing to be approved, which will likely take four to six months. After that, she’ll be put on another waitlist for a housing voucher.
It’s a common misconception that people who live at shelters don’t want to work or find their own housing, said Terri Behling, Haven’s director of communications. “It’s not that, it’s the waiting.”
Claire, who had not started walking until recently, is receiving physical therapy and is now “thriving,” Smith said.
Since Smith has been at Haven, she’s seen several families come and go while she waits for permanent housing.
She’s optimistic that her new job and childcare subsidies will allow her family to flourish, so she’ll have a home of her own before the next point-in-time count
“There’s frustration, but I’m not letting that get me down,” Smith said. “We have a roof over our heads. I have a job. I have daycare. I’m doing all that’s asked of me. I’m looking at the positive, not letting the negative get to me.”
