How emergency rooms help us understand the role of homeless shelters |

“So long as bad luck exists – and it always will – we will need shelters for the unhoused to meet their immediate needs.” |

I was thinking about our work the other day. Specifically, I was thinking about those who started supporting us long ago when we focused mainly on meeting the immediate needs our clients face through our services at our shelter. Now, years later, we still offer shelter every night, but also proudly point to our efforts to end homelessness by providing interventions that lead to a permanent home.

It made me wonder: Do we do everything we can to help explain why we do both – offer shelter and focus on housing outcomes? Can you believe in the efficacy of a shelter and housing at the same time?

The explanation lies in a strategy that is well understood (albeit imperfectly implemented) and universally accepted in the medical world. We rely on emergency rooms to address urgent medical needs. But at the same time, we have a robust medical system to prevent and provide solutions to our pathological challenges with better lasting effect. Ultimately, we understand both the absolute necessity of the ER while we strive to rely on ER’s as little as possible. When they do become necessary, we try to leverage the engagement and promote longer term treatment by referring to more effective long-term medical interventions. In this model, the medical solutions are supported by the ER and those solutions make the ER both more effective and less central.

Ultimately, our shelter is the ER of our homeless response system.
So long as bad luck exists – and it always will – we will need shelters for the unhoused to meet their immediate needs. But it is also our job to leverage shelter engagement to provide as many housing solutions to our clients as possible, so we can end their homelessness and their need for shelter, creating capacity for others. Just like we imagine the elements of our medical system to work in harmony, that is what we strive for at All Roads, where the shelter saves lives and sets people on the road to a home. They are then not just safe one night at a time, but every night. That’s why our tagline is “Leading the Way Home.”

As such, we didn’t change our focus by creating more housing exits and programs, we expanded our focus in order to create even more value out of our Shelter efforts, to provide more value to our clients, and provide more value for our community which supports us. Shelters and housing work together like the ER and medical solutions, and together they make up the backbone of our homeless response system. In the end, shelters save lives, housing ends homelessness, and those are both goals we can all support.

Speaking of people who have supported us a long time, the Season of Giving can be nerve wracking for someone in my job, wondering each year if the community will look at the people we serve and the work we do and find it in their hearts to consider both worthy of their hard-earned resources.

This year felt especially tense. Faced with unprecedented challenges at the local, state and federal levels, we hoped for more support from the community, and I have been humbled by your response. From those who faithfully give what they can, to those who gave more than ever, to those who are new to the All Roads family of supporters, you have proven again that our community stands up for those with the least – with so little in fact that night after night, they have nowhere to call home.

While we build our housing and shelter programs, many of you have been there every step of the way. Others are newer. But either way, I am happy to report that we ARE making progress. A lot of it. Just in the past few months, we have made significant progress reducing the median length of stay at the shelter, we are re-inventing ways to support those who can solve their homelessness through work, and we are solving homelessness for almost 20 people a month. And none of it happens without you. That’s getting truer every year.

Thank you.