The city of New York is in a crisis. Currently, the city has the highest number of homeless people in the US. Approximately 62,000 people reside in homeless shelters. Nearly 40% of the homeless population in the city are children. This is the highest rates the city has ever witnessed since the Great Depression. The reelection of the current mayor Bill de Blasio in November is substantially dependent on his ability to solve the issue of homelessness in the city. According to the mayor, for the city to combat the homelessness problem effectively, it needs to open approximately 90 new shelters around the city. Additionally, the city will have to increase the current number of outreach workers canvassing the streets each day offering housing and other aids.
Introducing the StreetSmart
The New York City government together with community organizations such as BronxWorks and Project Hospitality hopes to minimize the homelessness menace using an app. With this app, the city will be able to handle better the homelessness population growth and establish how the trend can be reversed. The StreetSmart is like a database that makes things easier for nonprofit employees and city officials to gather and share vital information about homeless individuals. The city’s government is confident that the StreetSmart will shed light on what homeless people need.
How The Streetsmart Works?
The new app is expected to reduce the homelessness menace in NYC significantly. StreetSmart will closely work with social workers. With the app, social workers will note an individual’s medical needs, any family members, housing history, and services they’ve previously declined or they are looking for. Moreover, social workers will be in a position to access previously recorded information.
The StreetSmart will work like any other customer relationship management system, but for the homeless. Each day in NYC, around 400 social workers walk around the streets looking for homeless people. They collect their information about demographics, health, shelter history, and their income among other points of data. The social workers establish the population’s vulnerability and build trust hoping to place these people in some housing one day.
Previously, social workers entered data about their every encounter into some database. The problem was that those databases couldn’t talk to each other. It was impossible for a social worker for instance in the Bronx to know that they interacted with the same person who had checked into a shelter in Brooklyn a week prior. Additionally, the social worker might never establish why that individual left. Moreover, systems used by non-profits and city agencies seldom overlapped complicating the efforts to monitor people.
how will streetsmart help social workers?
According to the head of the Social Services Department in NYC, Steven Banks, the new application will provide valuable information to street workers and help persuade homeless people to come in. Upon storing demographic, health and other data from various individuals in the database, NYC officials hope to understand better problems such as health issues, growing homelessness in particular areas and other problems facing homeless people in the city. In other words, the StreetSmart will help officials in the city to monitor some of the issues faced by homeless people in NYC.
The city wanted a tool that could enable social workers to coordinate their efforts and provide the city government with a solid overview of the homelessness issue. This would go a long way to enabling city officials to come up with real data-based interventions rather than just rough estimates. NYC’s tech team collaborated with nonprofit organizations including BronxWorks and Staten Island Project Hospitality to establish what social workers need.
According to Juan Rivera, BronxWorks homeless outreach director; social work can be very challenging. Additionally, managing the work, tracking people, and monitoring the whereabouts of individuals is a huge thing his team deals with. Rivera added that there is a need for social workers to be effectively armed with the best possible information in order to build confidence with clients. For instance, social workers need to know whether a homeless person in their neighborhood lately left a certain program in some other neighborhood. With such information, social workers would be in a position to precisely establish homeless people’s needs. With the StreetSmart, social workers have access to all information about a homeless person they’ve encountered. Moreover, the manufacturers of StreetSmart worked to protect the privacy of clients. For example, only authorized officials have access to the medical history of people.
Also Read: How Balloon-Powered Internet Is Helping Peru During Severe Floods
Conclusion
The StreetSmart hopes to not only help social workers. In the future, the gathered information could help NYC proactively come up with solutions to problems. StreetSmart contains a map feature that clearly reveals where new encampments are popping up. Additionally, the feature shows locations where social workers are encountering the highest interactions. Social workers can use StreetSmart to determine the effectiveness of various housing facilities and other ways to keep individuals out of the streets. Regardless of the technology used, some societal issues such as homelessness could take many years to solve.
