A discussion with Director Josh Sabo of Springfield’s own Heartland HOUSED: Part One

Heartland Continuum's Executive Director Josh Sabo Credit: His LinkedIn

The crisis of homelessness and housing insecurity is a major one throughout the United States. This is not conjecture, but simple statistical fact. There are, according to a US HUD report on the topic, at least 582,462 homeless individuals across the country on a given evening – and that rough number does not even take into consideration the housing insecure, or even some alternative definitions of homeless. Millions more are added onto the nearly 600,00 people who suffer as homeless in some stereotypical sense.

There are ideas, solutions and the like wherever one looks, but in Springfield – as is currently in the process of being accomplished in Rockford – a public-private effort to functionally eliminate homelessness and housing insecurity is currently in the works. It is a strategic plan called Heartland HOUSED, and it was designed by The Heartland Continuum of Care alongside its vast network of community partners – many of whom the people of Springfield are already familiar with – to remedy the issue of homelessness.

Should the proactive, progressive, and proven proposition succeed in this city of nearly 114,000 people, there is no telling what innovations in larger cities across the nation could be witnessed – but it must succeed here in order for it all to be able to occur elsewhere in the future.

To achieve what is known as “functional zero,” concerning homelessness and the housing insecure, will take a great deal of effort and resources. As former Coordinator of the Heartland Continuum of Care, and new Executive Director of Heartland HOUSED in Springfield Josh Sabo said in the interview that WMAY conducted and enjoyed with him, it will – in fact – take a unified push from the public, the private, local, state, and federal governments, non-profits and philanthropists, as well as businesses small and large – but, he stresses that it can be done all the same, and with glee in his voice and face as he expresses these feelings. 

The process entails creating a social safety net of housing for people and the greater community – such that when a person does fall onto hard times for one reason or another, there is housing available, as well as constructive resources accessible to the individual so that they can keep their own metaphorical head above water. These are some of the objectives of Mr. Sabo, and he and his team are laser-focused on fighting homelessness proactively – even once functional zero is reached.

It is, after all, no easy feat to keep a life going when there are – oftentimes – so many impediments making each moment of a day more difficult than they are for those with a shelter and consistent access to fundamental needs and resources. Considered through this lens, asking someone without a house or access to a consistent source of food or personal care to find and subsequently consistently attend work is, as Director Sabo additionally noted, both unreasonable, and fundamentally unfair.

One additional note concerning this part of the discussion on this vast and broad issue: While some of the figures below represent what the estimated costs are currently for taking care of those without shelter or resources as is – as opposed to what they could be – Mr. Sabo expressed to me the belief that proactive plans would see even the reduced cost diminish as the people who have long suffered become better aided and assisted, and the societal system grows more capable of helping people before they needlessly suffer as a result of difficult life moments.

Below is just part of the discussion that WMAY had with Director Sabo when we visited his office the other day.

WMAY: Thank you for taking the time to speak with me and have me visit today; before we begin speaking as it concerns the Heartland Continuum of Care, the work that you all have done already and are looking to continue, as well as any and all other related topics, would you tell me a bit about yourself and your own background and what brought you to this point in your personal and professional life?

JS: I’ve lived in Springfield since 2004. Until 2020, I worked at a church in Downtown Springfield. As part of that work, we often provided assistance and attempted to provide referrals to people who were experiencing a housing crisis. Through that work involved we eventually began to ask questions about how beneficial our assistance was and who we should be partnering with to help people get the support they need to end their homelessness. 
Through these efforts, I got more interested in the approach our community was taking to address homelessness, the gap in resources available versus resources needed, and how I could be a part of helping our community move forward. The Coordinator position for the Continuum of Care was a new position created in late 2019 through support from the Community Foundation for the Land of Lincoln and the City of Springfield. I decided to apply for the position and accepted the position just before the COVID-19 shut down in March 2020.

WMAY: Now, with that done and sorted, please tell me if you could about the Heartland Continuum, a bit of its history, how it functions and what its role is within the local community and greater city of Springfield is, and will become once the highly publicized public-private innovations are functional?

JS: The Continuum of Care model was adopted by Housing and Urban Development in the 90s to ensure each community in the country has a local governing body focused on addressing homelessness. 
The Heartland Continuum of Care was established in 1997 and covers the geographic area of Sangamon County. The Continuum of Care is responsible for conducting a point-in-time count of all people experiencing homelessness each year, facilitating and applying for HUD grant funding, allocating State of IL Emergency Solutions Grant funding, and pulling together partners to collaborate to address and end homelessness. 
The Heartland Continuum of Care also invites all stakeholders and interested community numbers to be a part of the General Membership, which meets quarterly for updates and other times throughout the year for training. 
As a result of the Heartland HOUSED strategic plan, a new entity is being created to serve as the backbone organization for collective efforts to address homelessness and support Continuum of Care efforts. 
The organization, called Heartland HOUSED, will take further steps to facilitate the implementation of the strategic plan, hire staff to support the organizations, programs, and task groups working in our community, educate the community and share data on progress, and develop ongoing strategic efforts to reach the goals of the strategic plan.

WMAY: The homeless suffer disproportionate burdens as it concerns shelter, food, water, and accessibility to all sorts of other necessities that so many of us take for granted on a daily basis; do you feel that those who can be considered housing insecure receive less attention even than homelessness? Is this additional housing issue ignored, to any degree, because those insecure with housing often do not appear “homeless” as they surf couches and other shelters just the same as their counterparts who suffer upon the street almost exclusively? 

JS: People who reside in shelters or who are unsheltered represent the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the challenge of housing stability in our community. The impact of homelessness, especially chronic homelessness, on a person’s health is significant, and the longer a person experiences homelessness, the more detrimental it can be to their long-term well-being. 
The experience of homelessness is inherently traumatic. Developing a system that effectively addresses homelessness is an important element of overall community health. We often say housing is healthcare because being unhoused can create many additional negative health impacts for people who experience homelessness. 
Additionally, on a community level, the costs associated with historically not addressing homelessness effectively are high. Money is spent on shelters, staffing, outreach and other services, meals, police response, ambulance calls, and Emergency Room visits. Studies say that communities often spend around $40,000 a year to cover all of these costs. 
Through our strategic planning process, we project that a household could be supported in permanent housing for $13,000 a year. Permanent housing helps people to end their homelessness while the system our community has historically supported provides shelter beds that can keep people safe while ultimately failing to give them an opportunity to move on from shelter. Using community resources in this way also has an impact on those who are housing insecure because there are fewer resources to go around to provide assistance in the event of a crisis.
By providing supportive housing opportunities, the goal is to move our community from reacting to homelessness to a position where we are moving upstream to prevent and end homelessness which creates a healthier more supportive community while also using resources available in the most efficient and effective ways.

WMAY: Springfield, in my estimation, having done some work concerning the homeless and housing insecure, seems the perfect next place to attempt to bring homelessness to “functional zero,” precisely because of its size and population; are you confident that the safety nets that this public-private partnership hopes to strengthen can create a real blueprint that communities both smaller and larger than Springfield will be more confident to attempt to emulate themselves?

JS: I agree that we as Springfield and Sangamon County have a real opportunity to reach “functional zero” as a community. Reaching that goal will require true buy-in and an investment of resources from government partners, healthcare organizations, service providers, landlords, philanthropic organizations, and our community at large. 
There are many great resources in our community that combined with a relatively low cost of living create a unique context for addressing homelessness compared to larger cities. At the heart of our strategic plan are strategies that are built on housing first principles and a true system approach to homelessness. Each person’s experiences and challenges are unique and successful support will need to meet each person where they are and connect them to services they can benefit from. 
How that works will vary depending on each community’s strengths and weaknesses, but I believe in the framework. We’ve seen it work in places not too dissimilar from Springfield like Rockford, IL and we believe it can work in many different types of communities.

WMAY: “Food as a utility” has become a growing idea and movement across the country, as the amount of food available is unevenly distributed across communities across the country–not even considering the world for the sake of this question. Why not shelter too? Would these innovations, in your estimation, help those who find themselves seeking assistance from public and private groups such as yourself?

JS: This is a really fascinating question that I could think on for a while. There are different dynamics here with what the needs are and what can be delivered to meet the needs, but at heart, I see the need for our communities to refuse to accept the suffering that exists and to think openly and creatively about how we can work together to create better supports. 
So many approaches to addressing needs operate as they already have and fortify around perseveration of the status quo instead of taking more entrepreneurial approaches to solutions.

WMAY: What can everyday people do to assist their fellows–outside of public or private institutions? Is there anything, furthermore, that they can do with or through The Heartland Continuum of Care to make a greater impact upon those who need the most?

JS: I would encourage everyone to take time to learn more about the actual experience of homelessness, particularly from people who have experienced it at some point in their life. 
That could be done by reading a book, YouTube, or perhaps connecting with someone in our community. So much of the reaction to challenges around homelessness seem to lack empathy and a basic understanding of the difficulties that our neighbors experience. 
We have created a Community Ambassador training that talks about the system to address homelessness and what we are hoping to accomplish as a community. Over 150 community members have walked through that training. 
Beyond that, I think understanding the local needs and advocating for solutions with elected officials is an important way to support. 

WMAY: What part does public education have to play in changing the perceptions of those growing up in regard to the solutions to food and housing insecurity, the causes of these and related phenomena, and how governmental policy plays a role in either eliminating or exacerbating either?

JS: We plan to continue to educate the community on our progress in growing programs and opportunities that are needed to address homelessness. We also hope to work on issues around stigma as well as provide community training on things like trauma-informed care, harm reduction, and other important topics. 

WMAY: Any special events or announcements, innovations or the like would be useful for alerting the public about; 

JS: We have begun to take initial action steps to implement the strategic plan. Heartland HOUSED has been established as an entity and will serve as the backbone organization to lead the collective impact approach laid out in the strategic plan with support from the newly developed Strategy Board.
We have engaged a consultant to help us evaluate and improve our Coordinated Entry System. Fourteen staff members from six different organizations recently participated in a two-day Diversion and Rapid Resolution training and will begin working on how to implement these practices throughout the community. 

Our thanks to Director Sabo, Heartland HOUSED, and the Heartland Continuum of Care for their time.

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