Professor Tom Byrne Recognized for Proposal to Adapt Crisis Homelessness Intervention

Assistant Professor Tom Byrne received a Special Recognition for his proposal, “Adapting Critical Time Intervention as a Scalable Solution to Crisis Homelessness” at the Pioneer Institute’s 25th annual Better Government Competition, which was held in June of this year. The Pioneer Institute is a non-partisan Boston-based public policy research institute.

Each year the Pioneer Institute hosts a gala recognizing the winner and finalists of the annual Better Government Competition. The 2016 contest explored improving quality and access to care for individuals living with mental illness, and received hundreds of submissions from throughout the country.  Byrne’s proposal was one of four that was awarded a Special Recognition designation.
Byrne co-authored the proposal with Professor Dennis Culhane of the University of Pennsylvania School of Social Policy and Practice. The proposal focuses on utilizing evidence-based practices and an innovative financing model to scale-up programmatic responses intended to prevent and end homelessness.

Currently, Byrne told BU School of Social Work, there is great interest in an intervention known as permanent supportive housing, which combines subsidized housing and ongoing supportive services. The results are impressive. Such permanent supportive housing initiatives have “been linked with nationwide 22% and 35% declines in chronic and veteran homelessness, respectively, between 2009 and 2015.”

Byrne believes we need a “less resource intensive” but equally as effective model to tackle those impacted by “crisis” homeless, 85% of the current homeless population. Crisis homelessness is described a homeless episode trigged by an event such as eviction or transition out of foster care, prison, or inpatient hospitalization.  Those experiencing crisis homelessness are likely to require only short-term financial and case management assistance to regain housing stability.  An emerging program model known as “rapid re-housing” provides exactly this type of help.  However, the availability of rapid re-housing is highly limited in most jurisdictions, placing many of those experiencing crisis homelessness at risk of becoming chronically homeless.

Byrne and his co-author propose leveraging an existing evidence-based intervention known as Critical Time Intervention to expand rapid re-housing efforts with funding from Medicaid. This intervention provides time-limited assistance and support (typically 9 months) and is designed to assist those with mental illness and complex social needs, such as homelessness.

Want to know more? Read the full proposal here.