Scattered Sites: wrapping up the Research Phase

This post was originally published on June 10, 2023.

Over the past year, the i-Team has been focused on “Scattered Site” permanent supportive housing program run by the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing (HSH). This program gives subsidies to people experiencing homelessness to live in private-market units.

Specifically, could the i-Team help recruit more landlords to participate in Scattered Site housing?

Learn more about the beginnings of this project here.

The Research Phase

Before embarking on our research, we posed the following guiding questions:

• What is the Customer Journey for Landlords?
• Where in the engagement process are we losing landlords?
• How can we improve landlord engagement?
• Can (and Should) the City increase its Rental Assistance Portfolio?
• How can we move people into housing faster?

With those questions in mind, we proceeded on a robust, multi-month process to ensure that no stone was left unturned.

Primary Research

Interviews

• 7 Service providers (local non-profits that help clients find housing)
• 15 Landlords
• SF Apartment Association (trade group)
• 19 individuals either currently or previously experiencing homelessness

Surveys

• 80+ landlords
• Landlord Expo 5/18
• 12 service provider employees

Site Visits

• Client intake interviews
• Apartment walk-throughs
• Housing fairs
• Street outreach

Quantitative Data Analysis

• HMIS system data tracking 2200 individual clients (the ONE system)
• Provider-specific data sets
• 311 reports
• A/B testing of Landlord-facing messaging

Secondary Research

• Houston & San Diego EHV placements
• North Carolina system reorganization

What we found

Finding 1: people who get housing get housed in under 100 days.

This was both good and bad. Why? Well, we originally wanted to understand the drivers behind one of the primary metrics of the Scattered Sites program:

• Average time to housing for a person enrolled in a housing program is over 125 days.

125 is a lot! But, that’s where it got interesting…

• Most people that gets housing gets housed in under 100 days

• The average is skewed by people who NEVER find housing
• Of the people still waiting for housing, over half have been waiting for over 200 days.

But why do people not get housed…

Well, the data didn’t tell us much, including that there was no demographic difference between those who were housed quickly, and those still waiting.

So, on to our interviews…

Finding 2: clients who engage in the process get housed

In interviews with both Service Providers (Hamilton Families, Episcopal Community Services, Bayview Hunters Point Foundation, Bay Area Community Services, Brilliant Corners, Abode Services, Five Keys) and clients, one theme stood out above all:

• Clients who invest in the process reap rewards.

The quote that really stuck with us was from an individual who had recently moved into a new apartment via the Scattered Sites program: “Help is there if you want it, but you need to be ready to do some work. It isn’t just given to you.”

The main reasons that certain clients struggled according to providers:

• Missed appointments
• Didn’t or couldn’t have all their legal documents (driver’s license, etc.) on hand
• Couldn’t find an apartment in an area they wanted to live

But even if this was the case for a subset of Scattered Site clients, why does it still take nearly 100 days for individuals to find housing?

We heard rumors that certain landlords might discriminate against subsidy recipients, but was that really accurate?

Finding 3: Landlords have major reservations about the Scattered Sites program

At the May 2023 Landlord Expo, the i-Team developed a survey to baseline a proposed Net Promoter Score for City-backed programs.

Landlords who had had a Scattered Site tenant were MUCH more likely to support the program than those who hadn’t.

But why?

It turns out, the most common way that landlords learn of the Scattered Sites program was through “word of mouth,” and horror stories are the most common ones to tell.

Here were some common concerns voiced by landlords we interviewed:

• “ I would love to offer the apartment for people transitioning from homelessness or refugee status….[But] I am terrified that I will find myself in a situation where I cannot evict a non-compliant tenant or do an owner-move-in eviction without a usurious buy-out, to allow living quarters for a caregiver for my disabled husband.”
• “It would need to come with additional financial guarantees for damages when they move out. I’ve had more than one experience where a tenant had damages that exceeded their deposit and they were able to pay the funds for all repairs.”
• “Frankly, I’m not sure Risk Mitigation funds can overcome the negative Yelp reviews I’d get from other tenants. Those hurt more than a trashed unit.”

In our surveys and interviews, we actually found that most landlords very much want to help someone who is down on their luck, especially families. But reservations about potential problematic tenants creates massive friction.

Finding 4: lack of public data reinforces landlord fears

All tenants (subsidies and otherwise) pose a risk of nuisance in a rental unit, ranging from late rental payments or trash removal to causing significant damage to a unit.

Landlords have a good sense of how likely this is in the general population, but fear the worst with the voucher population.

Landlords have every right to fear a destroyed apartment — evicting a tenant and fixing the damage can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.

But there is little data available to push back on landlord concerns.

For instance, San Francisco offers mitigation funding for damage to units caused by voucher tenants. However, historically, the City has not published data about how many times (or how much) mitigation funding has been needed. This only reinforces the viewpoint that voucher tenants are more damaging to units than their market-rate counterparts.

Additionally, we do not split eviction data by subsidy holders and non-subsidy holders.

So, what’s next?

All of our research has landed on one focal point: data is needed to change the narrative.

We’ll be looking at a variety of options, including but not limited to:

• Landlord-facing website that more clearly describes the Scattered Sites program
• Place where landlords can sign up as good destinations for subsidy holders
• Website that publishes mitigation spending and eviction data

Stay tuned!

This post was originally published on June 10, 2023. That blog has now been deprecated and is republished here on Medium in its entirety.