Integrating Housing and Social Services

1
Integrating Housing and Social Services

• PADM 521Fall 2011
• Professor Mario Rivera

2
Case

• The case highlights a Housing Authority that
  worked collaboratively with nonprofits and local
  government agencies to develop an innovative
  program, Project Self-Sufficiency (PSS),
  originally a federal demonstration project. The
  program has successfully graduated four hundred
  motivated families from public assistance.
  Housing Authority Director Steve Holt then needs
  to respond to a new national mandate from the
  U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development
  (HUD) called Family Self-sufficiency, which
  resembles PSS in name only. PSS must now provide
  universal access to all welfare families rather
  than just those the program operators define as
  motivated. Program operators believe strongly
  that the use of motivation as a selection
  criterion has led directly to the overall success
  of PSS.

3
PSS

• The PSS initiative involves provision of a broad
  range of social and community supports to
  participants, and it also involves other policy
  areas mental health, family support, education.
  The program achieves its goals through a
  networked, collaborative, partnering approach
  with a broad range of human service,
  governmental, and advocacy agencies. The PSS
  collaborative focuses on creating more stability
  for low-income families so that they can
  successfully use public housing subsidies to
  transition off public assistance. Steve Holt has
  to wrestle with how to respond to mandated change
  in program implementation without destroying the
  essential (individual motivation based) elements
  of PSS.

4
PSS

• The defining feature of PSS is its ability to
  leverage Section-8 housing certificates for
  families in poverty. These valuable certificates
  offer publicly-funded vouchers which can be used
  to access housing in the rental market. As in
  many communities in the U.S., in Snohomish
  County there are long waiting lists to access
  these vouchers. Additional funding for PSS comes
  from the Community Services Block Grant Program
  of the federal Department of Health and Human
  Services. Funds are administered locally by the
  countys Division of Community Services and the
  Housing Authority.
• In addition to the County Housing Authority,
  HASCO, the Everett Housing Authority (the housing
  authority of the countys largest city), the
  members of the Human Service Coalition, other
  nonprofit health and human service agencies, and
  the county council all have gained national
  visibility from the innovative PSS program.

5
Funding, management, and stakeholders

• Funders and government agencies at multiple
  levels vertically shape the task and
  institutional environment of PSS. The HUD
  regional office is significant, as well as the
  states Department of Social Services. The county
  council likely has considerable influence.
  Numerous organizations also are involved in the
  horizontal provision of services human service
  coalition members make referrals, local United
  Way funds supplement public dollars, partners are
  found with corporations, nonprofits, and
  universities as well as other educational
  institutions.
• These may be characterized as stakeholders. A
  stakeholder is any affected person, group, or
  organization that can place a claim on an
  organizations attention, resources, or output.

6
How would stakeholders and their actual
potential roles influence be identified?

• HUDs interest in this issue is fulfilling its
  Congressional mandate. Federal law gives HUD
  formal authority to mandate local compliance with
  the new FSS regulations (which amount to a return
  to old regulations). These constrain the
  eligibility-determination process. However,
  there are multiple levels within HUD, and staff
  at the regional office have an interest in
  sustaining the innovative work of PSS. These
  staff might have some ability to influence how
  federal laws are interpreted. Also, the Human
  Services Coalition has an interest in helping
  deliver a full set of services to get families
  out of poverty and maintaining the current PSS
  program. Its power is based upon the six years
  of experience with PSS but some agencies have
  board members who might be tapped to leverage
  other local philanthropic resources for
  supplemental funding.

7
Stakeholder analysismapping relationships

• Stakeholder analysis focuses on areas of
  competing interests and expectations, as well as
  points of convergence that actors might make use
  of to reach their programmatic aims. Clearly HUD
  has power and legal authority in this case its
  policies allowed for the development of the
  Project Self-Sufficiency pilot and its new
  mandate precipitates the crisis depicted in the
  case. HUDs eventual inaction also allows PSS to
  continue functioning. The County Council has
  significant power and exercises legal oversight
  of the countys administration. The countys
  Housing Authority developed PSS and led a
  community response to salvage PSS, identifying
  and mobilizing new resources and establishing new
  vectors of collaboration.

8
Stakeholder analysis

• What is Steve Holt to do? How can he counter the
  new procedural constraints and address
  conflicting goals (recall Wright). He can take
  advantage of formal professional and
  organizational ties. And he can make use of the
  informal ties and shared commitments that have
  arisen among organizations.
• The HUD Regional Office has gained a great deal
  of positive, national attention from its
  involvement in PSS in Snohomish County. In the
  end, that office supports Holt in his effort to
  save PSS. Holt secures sustainable funding from
  the county and redirects resources such as VISTA
  volunteers. He can draw on a broad coalition of
  diverse playersa collaborative networkof
  individuals and agencies which can advocate for
  ongoing support, drawing upon PSSs solid program
  record.

9
Emergent networks

• Social network analysis and Action-Network
  Theory suggest that organizations at the center
  of a large number of ties to other organizations
  are significant (Provan and Milward 1994 Provan
  and Milward 1995). There are different kinds of
  ties and functions. Organizations might be tied
  to others through joint programs, shared
  resources, clients, or funding, as well as shared
  mission. They might function conjointly at
  various governance, administrative, or
  operational levels, Some ties are formale.g.,
  created by legislative authority or from formal
  contracts. Others are informalthey emerge out
  of social relationships. Often, there is an
  emergent quality to networks, as seen in Katrina
  as well as in this case.

10
What is required for emergent organizations to
obtain and to be sustained?

• Emergence is likely when members perceive a
  present threat, when the social climate is
  supportive of emergence, when social ties are in
  place at least to some degree before the
  mobilization, when the social setting legitimizes
  the groups, and when resources are available
  (Quarantelli et al., 1983). Compare conditions in
  the Katrina, Integrating Housing, and Drilling
  cases. Did networks emerge to address the
  challenges that arose. What conditions fostered
  and constrained this emergence?
• Quarantelli, E.L., with K.E. Green, E. Ireland,
  S. McCabe, and D.M. Neal. 1983. Emergent Citizen
  Groups in Disaster Preparedness and Recovery
  Activities An Interim Report. Newark DE.
  University of Delaware, Disaster Research Center.

11
Implementing Networked Government

• The transition from a traditional approach to
  public administration to networked governance is
  very challenging. Such governance requires a
  different set of managerial and leadership
  skills, including the following Identify and
  maximize core values develop and manage
  strategy develop and manage relationships
  bargain and compromise negotiate and mediate
  act as a broker or boundary-spanner bridging
  organizations understand stakeholder and
  constituent needs solicit and incorporate best
  ideas and best practices design new or integrate
  existing networks organize and coordinate
  network activities establish accountability
  contract for outside advice or otherwise secure
  it when necessary. What other skills are
  required?

12
Principal-agent issues in IG administration

• In intergovernmental contexts, local (county,
  city, housing authority) decisionmakers have two
  simultaneous roles. They are both
• Agents for their local constituencies, so they
  have incentives to provide at least
  acceptablepreferably very good public services
• and agents for higher government levels (in this
  case, the Federal Department of Housing and Urban
  Development), so they are expected to obey the
  injunctions of federal agencies to which they
  must respond, even if these are detrimental to
  local constituencies.
• State and local government managers are therefore
  often compelled to engage in competitive,
  zero-sum games, for instance with regard to
  intergovernmental transfers. However, in the
  present case, the housing authority manager acted
  as a leader, turning the usual, zero-sum game
  into a variable-sum onein which he enlisted the
  support of the regional HUD office in defense of
  his responsive local program from HUD HQ, in such
  a way that everyone emerged a winner.

13
What Accounts for Successful Networked Programs
in Intergovernmental Settings?

• What accounts for the creation, development, and
  maintenance of sustained collaborative-network
  organizations and programs, such as those
  sustaining Project Self-Sufficiency? Leadership?
  Community support?
• Do collaborative programs need to reach a certain
  level of complexity and functionality in order to
  attain sustainability? Why or why not?
• Does good political management engender program
  sustainability and success or, conversely, does
  sustained and demonstrable success engender a
  supportive political environment? Mutual
  causation, circular causation.
• This case indicates the need for both external
  and internal supports, and for their integration,
  in network formation.