Ep 80- Tackling Homelessness with Kelly Young

Transcript

Transcripts are generated by machine learning, so typos may be present.

BTB (00:00):

Welcome to the Building Texas Business Podcast, interviews with thought leaders and organizational visionaries from across industry. Join us as we talk about the latest trends, challenges, and growth opportunities to take your business to the next level. The Building Texas Business Podcast is brought to you by BoyarMiller, providing counsel beyond expectations. Find out how we can make a meaningful difference to your business at boyarmiller.com and by your podcast team where having your own podcast is as easy as being a guest on ours. Discover more at yourpodcast.team. Now. Here’s your host, Chris Hanslik.

Chris (00:42):

In this episode you’ll meet Kelly Young CEO of the Coalition for the Homeless in Houston. Kelly shares several great tips for leaders including the value of direct communication. She also sheds light on the homeless response system and why Houston is leading the country in reducing homelessness in our community. Kelly, I want to thank you for taking the time to come on building Texas business. It’s great to see you.

Kelly (01:09):

Lovely to see you, and thank you for inviting me.

Chris (01:12):

So you are the CEO of the Coalition for the Homeless in Houston, and so a little bit different guests than normal, but not outside the box for us. Tell us what the Coalition for the Homeless is and what it does.

Kelly (01:25):

So I like to think of the Coalition for the Homeless as a coordinating body over what we call the Way home, which is a collective of for-profit or nonprofit and public entities that come together to resolve the issue of homelessness.

Chris (01:38):

Very good. So how did you get involved in the Homeless Response system? How long have you been involved and what really inspired you to do this?

Kelly (01:46):

I’ve actually been interested in helping people figure out better lives for themselves since I was like 12, I mean was what was called a people tutor when I was in a middle school where I actually helped individuals with physical disabilities learn sports and then I did some tutoring in high school and then I started working in a shelter for abused kids and I worked with kids who were coming out of psychiatric units. Then I worked in domestic and sexual violence. So I think I was always on a path to be a part of something that helped make other people’s lives easier for them to be successful. When you do a lot of that direct work, you see the individual impact and the individual failures. When you get to do it on a systems level, you get to decide whether a system will be helpful in helping someone or whether it’s setting up people for failure.

(02:34):

So I’ve been in the way home system for about 12 years as an individual agency that helped provide direct services, but I’m actually a system sinker by nature, and so I kept going, well, why doesn’t this work and why doesn’t this work and the homeless system here works? My job was to help it work better. So with any system or any business, you’re constantly thinking about the future and what needs to change and what’s going to be different coming up. And so I got the perfect opportunity to come in at a time when there is a major shift in many of the pillars of how the work is done and I get to help design what that’s going to look like and that to me is the purpose of work.

Chris (03:13):

Love it. That’s great. So just to give our listeners maybe some context, let’s just talk about the size of the organization, the coalition itself and maybe then the system participants and members so they get an idea of what it is that the organization is that you’re running as well as the system that you’re trying to help manage and as you said, get better and be more successful.

Kelly (03:39):

Well, I think like any business, we are well structured in terms of having enough staff to do the things that are core to our business model. And a couple of those things is we have a heavy compliance and finance department. We are nonprofits are tax status, not our business model, and we think of finance and compliance as sort of the heart of the organization. It pumps the blood through because we manage and help support almost 23 million to $40 million worth of federal funding, which requires us to follow lots of rules and regulation and make sure it’s done correctly, not just for us but also for our partners. We will provide certain types of services if we think that from a systems perspective it makes sense to have an overlay. So we have an outreach team, we have a landlord engagement team, and I can go more into depth about that when I talk about the system.

(04:28):

And then we have a housing team and those are really to bolster the system, not to replace the system in those jobs. And then we have this second largest department, which is really our data. We’re a data-driven organization. 12 years ago the coalition made a major shift, which was to use data to drive the construct of how the community actually resolves homelessness or deals with homelessness in the community. And in that data what we did was build out our a hundred partners who have to agree to be a part of the database and include all that information, but also follow some of our guidelines around standards so that we can bring more and more money and from the federal government, but also provide much better services and a quicker response to somebody who falls into homelessness.

Chris (05:13):

And at the coalition, what is it roughly 80 ish I think employees?

Kelly (05:16):

Yes, we’re at 80 and I think we’re also unique because we sit between the county and the city. We are trying to manage both of their expectations around homelessness. So sometimes people think of us as quasi government, we are a nonprofit, but we sit there so that we can meter both sides what the county and the city wants and they don’t have to be trying to work that through. So we always find the best solution for both Harris County, Montgomery County, and Fort Bend and then the city of Houston.

Chris (05:44):

Very good. So yeah, let’s talk a little bit about the system. Some people may be aware I think a lot, but just the success of Houston and how Houston has become the model for on addressing homelessness, reducing homelessness in our community. A lot’s been written most recently about the Houston Chronicle a little over a year ago. New York Times, you’ve been involved and interviewed in those things. Share a little bit for people to understand how successful Houston’s been to date and of course we can talk more later about the challenges we still face.

Kelly (06:17):

Yeah, I mean I think one of the things, and again, any good business person or anybody who’s looking to innovate, understands that you first have to know the problem you have and then understand how you want to solve that problem. And for what I think the system did really well over the last 12 years is to build out the right system mechanisms and then the right interventions to use our money to the fullest extent. So what most people don’t understand is that for the homeless response system, which we oversee, that is mainly funded by federal dollars. And so we are under federal guidelines on how we do that, which means we actually cannot interact or help somebody until they’re currently on the street. And in that then we have to be able to place them in other places including permanent supportive housing, which is for somebody with a documented disability who’s been on the street for a long time, they still will pay part of their rent out of their disability dollars, but we give them a subsidized apartment and appointments to get off the street and going again.

(07:13):

I think the other piece that people don’t understand is that we only have two systems. We only have rapid rehousing or permanent supportive housing. So our options are very limited, which means you have to be incredibly smart and innovative about how you engage not only the community, the people who need the service, but then the service delivery. Where we have taken advantage of, which I think is true in Houston, why I love this city so much is we take disasters and turn them into determination. And so we took both the Hurricane Harvey and Covid and use those additional dollars to build out enough of a safety net, but then also a permanent place for people to live that we were able to move over the last 11 years, 30,000 people off the street, we’ve reduced homelessness by 60%. And I know people are like, well, but I see people on the street. Absolutely, but you don’t see the ones we placed in the housing and who moved on with their lives because they’re gone, they’re doing their lives

Chris (08:11):

Thing. People that I think should know is, and you can share some details and we know from the research and the data that a lot of what at the streetlight, those aren’t homeless people.

Kelly (08:23):

We also have an issue with people living below the poverty line. So United Way points out and rightfully so, that 40% of the individuals in Houston are $400 away from catastrophe. And that means we have a lot of people living on the edge. So if you’re unable to get a job or you’re unable to work, you might see people who are out panhandling. There’s also people who take advantage of people who are in those situations and use that as their own mechanism to make money because they actually place people there and then collect some of their money so that they can go stay in their shelter. So it’s an interesting world when you actually find out what’s going on in your street corners,

Chris (08:58):

Right? Well love that. Obviously very close to this issue and the system and so I think it’s great to be able to tout the success we’re having as well as the challenges we face. People talk about the goal of ending homelessness. I love the phrase that’s been adopted is making it rare, brief and non-reoccurring because as you said, so many people are living right on the edge, something’s going to happen and people are going to end up homeless. But the questions that are system there that can rapidly get them into housing and the supportive services they need to re-correct?

Kelly (09:37):

Yeah, absolutely. And I think the important piece of this is looking at equilibrium, so what you want, I don’t need to have a lot of additional dollars that are sitting there waiting to do something I need just in time dollars. I need to know that if a downturn has happened in the economy, if there’s something happening on the street return in terms of people falling more readily into homelessness, rents have gone up, something else has happened, I want to be able to bolster that very quickly so I can move those individuals off the street within 30 to 45 days. That reduces not only the trauma on that individual, but it reduces the trauma in the community. And as a community member myself, I mean I live in midtown so I often see a lot of individuals I’ve known for a long time to be on the street. And what I don’t want people to do is to get to the point where they don’t care about those individuals anymore because it’s disrupting their community. So equilibrium not only benefits the individual who is facing a really difficult time and moving them on quickly, so it’s a blip in their life, not an extension of their life, and then also for the community to be able to stay in that caring and compassionate place so that they’ll get involved and stay involved in the work of our unhoused neighbors and friends and quite honestly brothers and sisters.

Chris (10:47):

So let’s turn the page a little bit and talk about you came into this organization at the beginning of 2024. Let’s talk about what it’s like to step in as a CEO, A new CEO into an organization and some of how you approach that from a mindset I would think some of our listeners may find themselves there may be experiencing it as well. So what was the mindset you kind of took in to make it a smooth transition and so that one, you could honor what was being done by the maybe previous CEO, but make a smooth transition and find a way to put your own mark on the organization moving forward.

Kelly (11:27):

I think one of the best things people can do is first lie to themselves and then tell their truth. The lie you tell yourself is that everything’s going to change and you list it out and you ready yourself for that intellectually. I do think where you probably need to tell your truth is that change is complicated and hard. I think sometimes when you’re in a leadership role, you want to reframe things for other people so that it’s easy for them to understand and maybe to jump on board, but you yourself know it’s difficult. I mean when you know the financial picture is going to change, the model’s going to change, the people are going to change, and those were all true for us. That list sounds great and easy, but it is a constant attention to each small move that you’re making and what the long-term impact is.

(12:15):

I always describe strategy as visionary and improvisational and I think that’s a good balance and that’s how I’ve been able to translate what I think needs to happen in an organization. I mean obviously you’re listening, the pillars are sort of change. You’re listening to other people, you’re absorbing other people, but I also come in and I’m really clear about how I work and what my accomplishment looks like and how success looks to me, and I drive that home in every single meeting so people learn to trust that what I’m saying is true. When I make a mistake, I tell everybody straight up, it’s not falling on my sword. I just think it’s important to model that. I think one thing is for some of us who are more introverted thinkers, one of the hardest things to learn to do is how to communicate your messaging to people because I do so much of it in my head, I have to remember to actually put words to it.

Chris (13:07):

Well,

Kelly (13:09):

Yeah, go ahead.

Chris (13:10):

I was saying not right, but I can relate to that because not only that, there’s so many things going on in your brain and I just completed this, I got to get to the next thing. And it’s finding that time to either stop and slow down and communicate before you move on or remember at some point you need to stop and let people know what’s going on through those ears. Hello, friends, this is Chris Hansley, your building Texas business host. Did you know that Boyer Miller, the producer of this podcast is a business law firm that works with entrepreneurs, corporations and business leaders. Our team of attorneys serve as strategic partners to businesses by providing legal guidance to organizations of all sizes. Get to know the firm@boyermiller.com and thanks for listening to the show.

Kelly (14:01):

Yeah, I always call it the Kelly Young Madness or the Kelly Young Magic like some people are good at waiting to see what’s going to happen. Other people are like, I have no idea what she’s doing and we’re just going to hope this all works out. And it’s my responsibility as a leader to alleviate both of those misunderstandings, right? Because I need people engaged in the process. I’m a big believer that right buck stops with me, I’m going to make the final decision, but very rarely is the final decision. My decision, it’s everybody else’s input. I’ll take the accountability, I’ll be the one who pushes it through, but if I don’t have the buy-in from the group and they can’t be settled in some agreement, especially when you’re changing from something that has run successfully for a very long time and all the conditions changed and change and you have to let people know, we’re not changing. You did something wrong. We’re changing because it’s time to move forward. That kind of reframing I think is extremely helpful and that stuff, you should know what you’re going to say and how you’re going to lay that out to your team before you start day one.

Chris (15:05):

Very good. So speaking of team, obviously you just said this in one of your responses. That is while the buck stops with you, you make the final decision. It’s rarely your decision. That’s because you have a team around you and you’re relying on them and you’re pushing them, all those things. So let’s talk about building a solid team around you. What are some of the things that you look for? Again, this isn’t your first time to be CEO of an organization, so I know you’ve built teams more than once. Let’s talk a little bit about that. What are some of the things you look for in the hiring process, in the evaluation of the people that you have when you take over? I think there’s a lot that could be learned from that.

Kelly (15:47):

I’m one of those people, I’m a little super nerdy this way and I learned a decision making model a long time ago called the Seven Hats, and the idea behind it is that each person at the table wears a different hat. And so you have somebody who’s the white hat, which is the emotional and red hat, and they’re the naysayer. And as much as I’d rather have everybody just do what I want and like me and do all that, I also know that’s a terrible way to run anything. So I work really hard at actually having very different ways of thinking at a leadership level. Sometimes that causes more conflict or contrast in the way we resolve an issue, but I expect people to come and learn professional communication skills. And if you can’t, you should go back to school or learn a YouTube. I don’t care because the purpose should be, I need you to be here for what we’re here for.

(16:35):

I don’t like a lot of internal nonsense. I don’t like us spending a bunch of time on stuff that doesn’t matter because the kind of work I’ve always done meant somebody did not get out of a domestic violence situation. We were spending time arguing about who left a coffee pot on. I walk past somebody who’s on the street who needs to get housed. I don’t want to sitting around arguing because somebody thought somebody was rude one day. That just can’t be in the workplace. I get why it is, but I want people who come ready to do work and actually can define what work means to them. The second thing is always happens in this field, I just want to help people. And that to me is the death nail answer because my question back to you is going to be what does that mean and how does that look?

(17:20):

Because you wanting to help people doesn’t have very much to do with actually serving people. Those are two very different concepts. So I also am very clear about the environment that I want at work, and you have a choice, don’t sign up and then come in and want to change it, add to it, make it better. But I’m not going to adjust what I think has to happen in an organization to go to the next level. I typically have taken jobs where I’m right in the middle of a major change and I do know what to be functionally happening on a regular basis to make that shift.

Chris (17:53):

So that’s very insightful. And the core of what I think you’re saying if you boil it down is it comes back to very clear direct communication, setting expectations, et cetera, and then holding people accountable. All that then leads to culture When you’re building these teams. And if you think about what you’ve done in the last nine months at the coalition, how would you describe the culture that or maybe you’re striving for or that you feel like you have growing there?

Kelly (18:23):

I have a speech. I used to call the mean speech. I never thought it was mean, but somebody had called it where I lay out what I learned over the time of my working and the time that I made some really serious mistakes and what I learned from those and how they need to interpret that into their new work environment. And so with that, I think what happens in the culture is they actually see me living the story I told and I bring it up over and over again in different pieces. I think storytelling is important for that reason, but I show them what I did that didn’t work so that they have a clear understanding of what I learned from what I didn’t do or what I did wrong. So they understand that this is a learning environment, that part of your responsibility is to be curious and to want to understand how to do things better or differently.

(19:11):

If you come in and you say to me, well, I just need the training and I need this, you will not last well in my organizations, I expect that you’re more interested than that. You have to want to care about data. Data is most important particularly in nonprofits because you are telling the future of how most federal dollars are going to be spent in your case notes or in your reports. I talk a lot about gossip and that you can’t stop it, but you have a personal and professional integrity line in how you can count. For me, I run it this way, which is every single dollar that comes in here is somebody else’s dollar and somebody else’s money. And so there’s very little room to make major mistakes or to waste because that’s your money that you’re wasting. And if we cannot do it the best, if we cannot show up in ways that people expect, then we should give that money to somebody else. And I tell people, don’t be miserable if you don’t like working here. You don’t like the work, you don’t like the commute, you don’t like any of that stuff. Oh my gosh, why are you spending your life doing something you don’t like? Go be happy.

Chris (20:13):

That’s so true. I mean I think we talk about it, I know in our organization is if you don’t connect with our mission and our passion, it’s okay. It doesn’t make you a bad person. It just means there’s a different organization for you where you’re going to be happier and then you should go find that We want the people that if they connect with that mission and passion of our organization, then they’re going to be living their best self, which opens them up to serve our clients and each other to their fullest potential. Right?

Kelly (20:42):

And I also think we try to be very, or I’ve always tried to be, I’m not interested in telling you how to do your job because you don’t want Kelly Young’s opinion of how to do your job. You want your own opinion. I hired somebody who’s smart and talented and knows how to do that, and you don’t want my limited vision of that. But when people also say, well, I don’t like to be micromanaged. I’m like, well, I’d be interested in why people feel like they have to micromanage you. So if you are showing up to work and letting people know I shouldn’t have to do that, but I will if you’re not able to do that, because I still need to know what’s happening. So I often turn some of those things that people say back on them just so a little self-awareness and help them understand because you will not working for A CEO who will say, who will call you and be like, why does this number not match this number? And it’s not because I don’t trust you, it’s that I need the number to make sense about to go tell a bunch of people this number. It’s interesting. I actually really love building culture. I think I do a good job of creating enough openness that people feel like they can participate if they choose to. Well,

Chris (21:46):

One of the things I think has been written a lot about, and it’s a hard skill for some leaders to get to, but you learn so much by rather than telling, is asking questions and like you said, turn it around on ’em and ask the questions. And a lot of times as they are forced to answer those questions, they realize where to go.

Kelly (22:08):

And it’s funny because there’s a new book out by the gentleman who wrote Sapiens and his new book is called Nexus. And I heard him in an interview and I thought this was really interesting. I do think this is an issue with the workplace and maybe some generational conflict is he talks about information and not this is new, but information is not truth. And part of the problem is that we tend to try to over inform and overeducate to get to truth. And neither one of those things will actually get you there because truth is costly. It takes time, it takes energy. And I do think we’re in an overload of informing people as though that will change or grow somebody’s understanding when really all it did was add more information, not deeper truth. So I just find that a fascinating, I thought about it in terms of the work we do because I think one of the things the coalition has always done has been a truth teller. And in that truth telling right now we’re in huge inundation of information going through a lot of change. How do we settle back into our truth?

Chris (23:11):

Interesting. Yeah. Okay. So you mentioned this in what I can’t wait to hear more about may not have time on this podcast, but your mean speech. You talked about the mistakes and sharing mistakes you made in the learning. And I don’t know if you have listened to one of these before, but I love asking people tell us about a setback, a mistake you made, but then how you learned from it. And I think to your point, when you share those stories with the people in your organization, it humanizes you and allows for that culture of learning take risk and it’s okay to fail how we learn and get better. So can you share an example that either comes out of the mean speech or something else, a Kelly Young mistake and how it made Kelly Young better?

Kelly (23:55):

And this one was interesting and I think it sort of aligns in particular with people who work directly with people. And I was a very benevolent leader at one point, so this is much more of a self-awareness mistake than an actual business mistake. But I think it’s important and it’s all about serving women. Everybody had on their desk on their computers, what did I do today to end domestic or sexual violence? And I was all gung-ho and I was there for the work and it was all said, and we got a new CEO and I thought that I should have been tapped for the CEO position and nobody asked me. And so I was very self-righteous in my understanding of first of all, well if you don’t let anybody know you’re interested, they probably won’t ask you. But second of all, just because you’ve done this job doesn’t mean you’re actually ready to do that job.

(24:44):

And so I was awful. I mean I was awful for about six weeks and I made everybody hear my pain and how hard it was on me and all this kind of stuff. The hardest lesson to learn and all that was that for all my bravado and my great messaging and whatnot, I really wasn’t there for the mission in that moment. I was really there for my ego. And if we are not self-aware enough to understand when you are using ego to sell people on a version of yourself that you think will make them like you better or follow you better, but it’s not true. You haven’t done enough. I spent six weeks wasting time and I left. I went and found a different job and that was the best thing for me to do. But in that one moment when you realize that you are a liar to yourself and to other people and you decide you’re not going to do that anymore. Best moment of my professional career, I never made a decision ever again around benevolence or around pretending that rhetoric was more important than what I really could show up and do. So I didn’t like that and I hate sharing that story. It sounds awful. I sound like a horrible human being, but I think most of us have that moment.

Chris (25:57):

What a powerful story. No, I mean I think to your point, I mean it doesn’t make you powerful a horrible person, but that’s a difficult thing for us as humans to face, to really look in the mirror that deeply and call ourselves out and more importantly then actually do what it takes to change.

Kelly (26:21):

And for me, what I learned is that if I really want to lead, it is not pretending you can’t play at leading. It is a commitment. It’s hard, it’s lonely, it’s complex, and you have to build in ways where your mind just stops thinking because a little bit of an overthinker and you have to do that self-awareness all the time. You’re in check all the time when you’re a leader

Chris (26:45):

And everyone’s watching, right? I think to your point where basically you can’t fake it, it’s because so many people are watching every move, whether it’s internal to your organization or external partners, you’ll get exposed really fast

Kelly (27:02):

And then you lose their trust. So they won’t show up for you when you need them to. And at the end of the day, whatever it is that you, because I think about innovators and I have a gentleman I know who helped work on some incubation around medical devices. Well, some people like, oh, well you work with homeless and must be so rewarding. I’m like, I actually think it’d be pretty cool to make medical devices that make people’s lives better. I don’t have that talent. So it doesn’t really matter what is at the center of your passion and your mission. I worry when we tell people, you fake it till you make it because in leadership you really can’t do that. You need to sit down and learn it. You need to know your truth. It goes back to that. You can inform me about all these things about being a leader, but until I know the truth about being a leader, I’m going to waste time. And I’m a hyper efficiency person. So for me it’s like if I can do it in two steps, I’d rather do that than 15. So I really don’t, faking it would be way too easy for me to just practice all the time. So

(28:00):

I have to not allow myself some of those things. Yeah, I’d rather be out riding my bike only because it’s only because it’s been a long week.

Chris (28:10):

I get you. I need that release too. Finding a way to release as a leader is equally as important.

Kelly (28:17):

Yes, absolutely.

Chris (28:19):

So let’s turn the conversation back around to homelessness. Talk a little bit maybe where we are, but what the future looks like. You’ve mentioned a couple times facing new challenges in this world of homeless response. Let’s talk a little bit about that. I know we have world Homeless Day coming up. You can share a little bit about that, but I just wanted our listeners to know a little bit about maybe how they can get involved and how they can help in this issue.

Kelly (28:45):

Yeah, I think we have done such an incredible job of getting people into some type of permanent solution. So we’re in decent shape there, but it was, as the Chronicle said, it’s duct tape and determination. When you have to rely on funding that comes from disasters or pandemics, that is a terrible planning model and not very fiscally sound. So I think a couple things for us. One is broadening our perspective. In this phase, we’re calling it phase four, and I think it’s important to realize that systems should always have phases or pivot points because systems die when they don’t themselves and make sure they’re on the right track. So right now what we’re doing is an overhaul of our data. What is our data telling us, but what is it more importantly not telling us what do we need to know about who is still on the street?

(29:34):

What do we need to know about our funding sources and what’s available? We know that we’re going to run out of funding because of Covid by 2025. I’m going to make the argument over and over again that we are not homelessness used to be able to be resolved by people coming together and kind of helping a family or helping an individual. We’ve had so many other systems end up feeding people into homelessness that we actually need a system response, and that includes system funding, which typically aligns with some type of consistent regular money that’s funding the system so we never have to be out of balance again. And that’s one of the things we’re working on. The second is we’ve actually been going out and doing community mapping to help people understand community is not given. It’s built. So if you want a different kind of community that you live in, you’re going to have to get engaged, and that’s one of the ways that you could volunteer.

(30:25):

So maybe you have a church that you’re in a neighborhood that people get fed, but the food containers and stuff get left all over the street or there’s whatever, well, you could complain about the trash or you could complain the city doesn’t pick up the trash or you all could start a walking group. Everybody needs exercise. So you have choices in how you decide to engage in your community. I do think becoming much more aware and understanding how the system works and doesn’t work resolves a lot of people’s frustration about seeing somebody on the street. We also have to have much better interventions for individuals who are severely mentally ill and have substance use issues. We have housed a lot of people who apartments and appointments works really well for. We have some individuals who just cannot make good decisions to care for themselves, and we’re going to have to address that. I

Chris (31:13):

Think that’s one of those things where people don’t understand. You said this earlier. Right now, the way the homeless response system is set up, the federal dollars are all housing coming from the housing side, and yet what we face and what you and your team know that we face is a very severe mental illness issue and what the hardest to serve yet no dollars from the mental health side of the equation

Kelly (31:38):

And certainly not at the level it needs to be in, including residential care, additional beds and substance use is even far worse funded. I understand people are like, well, I don’t want to, people just need to figure out how to get their lives together. I agree, but you’re making a choice. Then you’re either deciding, we’re not going to help somebody, so they’ll get where you want them to go or you’ll leave them on the street so they won’t go where they’re going to go. Again, these are choices that we are making. I am so happy to live in a city and a county that is as generous as it is. Houston is one of the, I think, premier cities for the purpose of the fact that people actually care, kind, friendly, smart, innovative. I think the other piece for us is really having to get more upstream. That 40% scares me. That is devastating to a system. You want to rightsize or actually shrink. I don’t want you to have me on a call 10 years from now and I’ve grown the homeless response system by three sizes. Somebody should fire me.

Chris (32:37):

That’s not work yourself out of a job.

Kelly (32:39):

Right? Exactly. And so right-sizing ours with the right amount of funding and then really pushing upstream to figure out how healthcare doesn’t release people back onto the street with serious illnesses, reentry that’s dealt with somebody who’s hit a hard time can quickly get rehoused because we’re helping for a few months. That’s just being good neighbors. So I think that’s pretty easy for people. We have a lot of work ahead of us, but I have the world’s smartest team and the people who built this system and have watched over it the last 12 years, we’re only going to figure out the right and the best path with the resources and the influence we have coming forward.

Chris (33:16):

Very good. Yeah, I think the future is very bright. We have the right people. So fundamentally, it’s a business podcast. And one of the things that some of the data that I love to share, because I always tell people when it comes to this homeless response and taking care of our neighbors who have fallen on this unfortunate time, there’s a compassionate side, which is obvious, but there’s also a business side and some people connect on that and just share the numbers on the cost it takes to with how someone on an annual basis versus if they’re left on the street and use our public health system, et cetera. Because to me, if business owners are listening and thinking about this, the investment in the homeless response system is a

Kelly (34:01):

No-brainer, right? When we look at the numbers and I’m going to add for inflation, we’ll probably be in a recession next year, is what I understand. Of course, they say that every year, and I’m like, really? At some point,

Chris (34:13):

Not I, no reason to even use the R word. Let’s just,

Kelly (34:17):

Can we come up with something else? Because this feels like a whole new thing, but I think you’re talking about to house somebody and to make sure that they have access to the current systems that they need through their appointments. And I always express this, they do not get to live for free. There is no free housing. They have to pay a percentage of their income or their benefits 30% like the rest of us. And so for that, it’s 19,000 to $25,000 a year. Not an extensive amount of money. You can go up to, depending on how often somebody uses other services, up to $250,000 for them to stay on the street. And the reason for that is that every time you call the police on ’em, you have to count that money every time they go into an emergency room, you have to count all of that money. It’s not to say they won’t use those services, but they’ll use ’em appropriately, which right sizes the dollars in the systems. So right now, all this money, people are saying, well, we don’t have the money. I’m like, we do. It’s in the wrong bucket.

Chris (35:12):

That’s right.

Kelly (35:13):

And if we moved it over and we agreed to just pay this for the next three years, I mean, if you’re willing to pay a hundred dollars a month for charity, why are you not willing to pay 1% on your beer or your vaping? You don’t even see that and get it to the point where you see the reduction in the rest of your costs, and then you actually feel the relief on the tax end because you’re not paying more and more on those parts of it. Wayne Young with the mental health services demonstrates that from a diversion point for people with severe mental health to get into care is a one to $5 save, so it’s $1 for him to do. It costs $5 for them to stay on the street, so economically, it makes no sense. It’s not cheaper. You’re avoiding the problem instead of solving it. And from any good business standpoint, that’s not what you do. You define the problem, you solve the problem.

Chris (36:02):

That’s

Kelly (36:02):

What we do.

Chris (36:03):

To summarize, I mean support the housing homeless response system. It’s roughly 19,000 to $25,000 a year to do it and help us move people into housing and off the street, leave them on the street. You’re looking at annual cost of a hundred thousand to $250,000 to our system,

Kelly (36:22):

Right?

(36:23):

And just the burnout rate of everybody trying to solve that and the trauma on the individual. I’m always going to add compassion to the dollars, but if you actually really care about that individual instead of just want them off the street, I don’t actually even care. You can have either of those opinions. It doesn’t matter to me, but it’s going to be cheaper, more efficient, more effective if you buy into the response system and ensure that we have the right interventions for those people and don’t have to wait until something terrible happens to be able to do this again.

Chris (36:52):

And ultimately all of that will make our community better and stronger.

Kelly (36:56):

Absolutely. Absolutely. When you look at the best player on a team, you also have to look at the one who’s struggling and you bring up the one who’s struggling. You spend less time on the one who’s already figured it all out, but if you’re in a team, you’re in a community, you’re looking at who’s struggling and how do we get them to some level of consistency in their lives or whatever. Otherwise, we’re always going to have to play down to that denominator.

Chris (37:18):

Kelly, this has been a fascinating conversation. Thank you. Really have appreciated your thoughts and sharing those with our listeners. I want to turn it to a little bit more of a fun lighter side before we wrap up.

Speaker 1 (37:32):

Excellent.

Chris (37:33):

You may have said this earlier. You mentioned something when you were a teenager, but what was your first job?

Kelly (37:37):

My first job was working at an ice cream store called Ferrell’s. I grew up in the Pacific Northwest, and every time it was somebody’s birthday, you had to bang out the drum, you had to slide it over your head and bang out the drum, and they get this big thing called the zoo, which was like 150 scoops of ice cream, and you had to wear this horrifying outfit with one of those straw hats that never sits on my head. I’m a little pointed, I think, and you learn very quickly, and this is why I love anybody who’s ever done food service and was successful in it and why I have an affinity for them. You learn very quickly how difficult it is to run restaurants on margin, but also nobody wanted to do that. You had to do it every single time, so that was my first real paying job that I got to check.

Chris (38:23):

Gotcha. Yeah, and I knew you weren’t from Texas and grew up in the Northwest, but you’ve been here long enough to be able to answer this question. Do you prefer Tex-Mex or barbecue?

Kelly (38:34):

Oh, that’s a good question. To dec, that’s hard to divide. I probably eat Tex-Mex more often, but I prefer barbecue.

Chris (38:42):

Okay. Unique answer.

Kelly (38:44):

Yeah, I like it. That’s an and yes answer. That’s an improv technique.

Chris (38:49):

Very politically motivated or correct answer.

Kelly (38:52):

I just don’t go to barbecue as much, but if I really sat down and thought about it, I preferred it. I just don’t, for whatever reason, don’t get there, which seems weird.

Chris (38:59):

Very good. Well, Kelly, thanks again for taking the time. This has been a great conversation. I’m looking forward to getting this out on all the social media and hope people will listen and learn more about what is going on in our homeless response system.

Kelly (39:12):

Well, thank you so much for having me. I mean, I would do anything for you. I think you’re amazing, so appreciate your time this morning.

Chris (39:18):

Thank you.

Kelly (39:19):

Alrighty. Talk with you later,

Chris (39:23):

And there we have it. Another great episode. Don’t forget to check out the show notes at boyarmiller.com/podcast and you can find out more about all the ways our firm can help you at boyarmiller.com. That’s it for this episode. Have a great week and we’ll talk to you next time.