The hotline unhoused people can call to access shelter and housing in Rhode Island received roughly 10,000 calls a month last summer. Just four operators answered the bulk of those calls, and the people calling sometimes waited on hold for nearly three hours, according to a little-noticed report delivered to state agencies last fall.
“The volume of calls is more than they can handle,” the report states.
Rhode Island Housing, the quasi-public state housing finance agency, paid a consultant to evaluate the hotline and the “coordinated entry” system that surrounds it. Federally-mandated and publicly funded, the Coordinated Entry System is intended to ensure the unhoused people most in need of housing and shelter receive it first.
Warwick-based HCH Enterprises conducted the evaluation, which found that the system is struggling to keep up with growing demand for help and a persistent shortage of affordable housing. The coordinated entry hotline has become the de facto place people turn for help, contributing to queues so long that most people wait months for housing placement.
“People are desperately seeking resources,” said Jennifer Barrera, chief strategy officer at the Rhode Island Coalition to End Homelessness, the nonprofit organization that operates the coordinated entry hotline. “We are trying to connect them with resources as quickly as resources become available.”
One-hundred-fifty calls an hour
The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development requires local groups to use coordinated entry to place people experiencing homelessness in housing according to their need. Rhode Island implemented the system in 2018, replacing a first-come-first-served approach with one that prioritizes people based on their individual circumstances.
Often the first step to accessing shelter beds and housing, most people who access the coordinated entry system in Rhode Island, do so by calling the hotline. Callers go through an assessment process: the more vulnerable a person is the faster they should be able to access housing or shelter.
“You need to be able to assess who’s most in need, who’s most vulnerable out there on the street,” said Eric Hirsch, professor of sociology at Providence College who is also involved in running coordinated entry. “You have to make difficult choices and that’s what coordinated entry is for.”
In the past two years, as the number of unhoused Rhode Islanders has exploded, the volume of calls to the hotline in Rhode Island more than quadrupled, according to the report. In 2021, the coordinated entry call system received about 2,500 calls a month. Last summer, the number had grown to more than 10,000.
During peak hours, the call center received between 150 and 190 calls an hour, the study found.
“People who are desperate are looking for answers, solutions, and resources to find some stability in their lives,” said John MacDonald, chief program officer at Crossroads Rhode Island, the largest service provider for people experiencing homelessness in the state.
Giving up on the system
More than 50 people experiencing homelessness participated in interviews for the evaluation. Most had used coordinated entry, and more than half said the system failed to resolve their immediate needs.
Many unhoused people raised concerns about how the system relies on them to call into the hotline. That can be a challenge for people with limited minutes on prepaid phones, or those who lack consistent access to a phone to be able to call in the first place.
Nearly half of the people on the waitlist for shelter eventually stopped engaging with coordinated entry, the report found. Some of those people may have found housing on their own and stopped calling.
“People trying to get shelter and housing have given up on the system,” Hirsch said. “And that’s because the system isn’t working.”
In January, more than 2,100 people were on the waiting list for housing placements in Rhode Island, according to the Coalition to End Homelessness. More than 800 were waiting for shelter beds, including children.
“The ideal goal is that shelters have beds open at night,” Barrera said. “So if someone has a crisis there’s a place for them to go…When you’re operating in a state, that’s some 24,000 units short, that’s not quite our reality.”
More local access and input
Since its inception, the coordinated entry system has directed people to shelter beds where they were available, so a person in Westerly in need of shelter might be referred to an opening in Providence or Woonsocket.
“[That] just isn’t a realistic solution,” said Elizabeth Bioteau, director of strategic programs at Rhode Island Housing, where she works on coordinated entry. “People are in the communities they’re in because they have supports in those communities.”
The report identified this lack of “regionalization” as one of the weakest points of the coordinated entry system in Rhode Island. Bioteau and others said work to integrate more local preference and control into the system was already underway.
Now, shelters can set aside a certain number of beds for walk-ins to make it easier for unhoused people to stay in the communities where they are already living. Walk-ins will still have to go through an intake process to determine eligibility and acuity.
The report also pointed out the need to increase in-person access to coordinated entry altogether. More than 100 people in Rhode Island are trained to do intake and assessment in the state, but still most of that work is happening through the already overburdened hotline, the evaluation found.
MacDonald, of Crossroads Rhode Island, said making more people available to help navigate the system in-person throughout the state, rather than relying so heavily on the call center, could make it easier for more people to get the help they seek.
“Having someone who can really … make that a smoother process and not have someone waiting and waiting and waiting for referrals to a shelter,” he said. “I think that we can implement and have a good impact.”
‘There are not any other numbers to call’
While the coordinated entry system prioritizes help for who are already homeless, the report found that in Rhode Island, it has become one of the primary places people facing housing instability turn for help. That clogs up the system and contributes to high call volume and extended waiting lists.
“There are not any other numbers to call,” Hirsch said. “If someone thinks that they might become homeless, they think, ‘Oh, I better call the homeless hotline.’”
Given the limited housing and shelter resources in the state, even individuals or families on the brink of homelessness are unlikely to get help quickly through the coordinated entry waitlists and may be better served through other interventions, the report found.
“If we can divert you away from the homeless system altogether, you often can get into permanent housing more quickly,” Hirsch said. “We really ought to have two different numbers.”
Crossroads Rhode Island has received funding for diversion programs that help people facing housing instability but who are not yet literally homeless find somewhere to go. Those efforts have helped hundreds of people access or stay in housing.
The Rhode Island Department of Housing and Gov. Dan McKee made more funding available for these kinds of programs last fall, which can range from helping people find a family member to stay with to paying for a bus ticket to get there.
The group that allocates funding for the coordinated entry system is already reviewing the findings and recommendations of the report, and developing plans for how to implement them, according to Rhode Island Housing.
But more than anything, Hirsch and others said to better serve Rhode Islanders in need, the coordinated entry system needs more affordable housing.
“People are looking for, ‘Well, what’s wrong with the system?’” Hirsch said. “It’s the lack of permanent housing.”