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1/ This piece on a woman and her husband sliding into homelessness and despair really stuck with me. Particularly the idea that they were $2000 away from regaining their lives. I seriously considered sending the reporter some or all of that money... washingtonpost.com/news/local/wp/…
2/ But didn't, because i stopped to ask myself, why this person who vs someone who didn't catch reporters eye, or would the money be better diverted to feeding a whole lot of people, or or or. But people did crowd fund, and now they have $22,000 washingtonpost.com/news/local/wp/…
3/ But this raises another question that haunted me. Instead of one-off crowd funding, why not start a program where micro loans/gifts were given to help people get housing, security deposit, etc, and then the results are studied systematically?
4/ In a way, this is what housing first programs run by cities/NGOs do, and they get results. That said, I feel like there is some kind of more systematic donor to recipient program to be leveraged, where individuals would be helped/larger data gleaned. Does anyone know of one?
5/ Like Kiva, but for domestic homelessness/housing insecurity.
6/ Something maybe that @Benioff could incubate.
@Benioff 7/ This is not a replacement for structural changes that are needed to address it, but it could provide some tools/data/be bridge solution while we work toward that.
@Benioff 8/ Oops, sorry HERE is the link to the follow-up story, and the Howard University law student, Gabriela Sevilla, who launched the crowd-funding effort. washingtonpost.com/local/social-i…
@Benioff 9/ Jen runs one of the best, most innovative, data-forward homeless programs in the country, I hope this will catch on elsewhere and be studied at scale:
