Marin County's 'collaboration over competition' cuts homelessness by double digits

The big picture:

• Marin manages over two dozen different funding streams for homelessness services, requiring constant coordination across local, state, federal, and nonprofit partners.
• Marin County achieved significant reductions in homelessness through a "collaboration over competition" approach, with chronic homelessness down 24%, veteran homelessness down 32%, and family homelessness down 12%
• A key part of their strategy has been deploying Civic Roundtable, which breaks down silos and enables seamless sharing of best practices and resources, ultimately allowing public servants to spend more time directly helping people experiencing homelessness.

The hard look in the mirror

“Collaboration, not competition.” It’s a simple mantra for Gary Naja-Riese, Marin County’s Director for Homelessness & Coordinated Care. That idea, per Marin County’s latest point-in-time reporter on homelessness, has led to demonstrable progress:

• People experiencing chronic homelessness decreased 24%
• Veterans experiencing homelessness decreased 32% from 2022
• The number of families experiencing homelessness decreased 12% from 2022

It wasn’t always easy. Nearly a decade ago, Naja-Riese told us, county officials had to take a hard look in the mirror about how agencies were helping the most vulnerable and in-need populations get permanent housing. “Agencies were competing, not collaborating. We weren’t pulling down resources and giving the kind of support providers needed. Leadership at the time got together, and with incredible humility, looked at what was happening with clear eyes. We came up with a strategy to make a difference; we prioritized evidence-based practices; we worked aggressively to pull down resources to public servants on the front lines. Ultimately, we committed to working together.”

By implementing Civic Roundtable, Marin County has taken another step towards fostering collaboration.

California’s fragmented response to homelessness

California has no single agency overseeing homelessness policy, with no legislation to discretely empower a response to homelessness. Instead, multiple departments with different priorities operate through various grant funding streams, many originally designed as temporary measures.

“Fragmentation doesn't even do it justice. People just reached and grasped for whoever could answer a question, and that takes a lot of energy and time. People don't have one question, they have 100. Spending all that energy times that many questions times that many staff, it's a whole ton of effort,” said Naja-Riese.

The fundamental fragmentation of service delivery — the patchwork of local, state, and federal government agencies, plus non-profits and other partner organizations that each own a piece of the pie — is the norm. 

“Every funding source has varying requirements and timelines and community organizations and frontline public servants that could use that funding to help people find permanent housing,” said Naja-Riese. ”In Marin County, we’ve maximized every funding source we possibly can, but you can imagine the complicated web that arises when we’re managing more than two dozen funding sources as a county.”

Naja-Riese explained the siloed nature of work before Roundtable looked like this:

• Frontline practitioners would call or email the county team. But individually answering questions meant the county team received duplicative questions from public servants in the field, and no one else had access to the answers from the county beyond the recipient. 
• When outreach workers collaborate together, they may find a successful resolution to a challenge but the same problem remains — other public servants don’t have any way to access that helpful information. 
• The few times when people across organizations were able to get together, like the CoC Steering Committee meetings, there simply wasn’t enough time or personnel bandwidth to adequately answer everyone’s questions.

“We needed a common place to come together to collaborate on the work we’re implementing, share information, and answer each others’ questions,” Naja-Riese said. 

Unified government operations for homelessness response

“We got Roundtable to make it easier for frontline workers to do their job,” Naja-Riese continued. “We know there are no shortcuts. However, by creating a space where people across Marin County — all of whom are working tirelessly to help people experiencing homelessness — can come together, communicate, hone their skills, find new tools and share new resources, it’s invaluable.”

Though Marin County’s partnership with Roundtable is in its earliest days, Naja-Riese can see the transformative power of Roundtable. “People have more time to serve the people who need help, to do the things they need and want to do.” The second benefit is emotional. By reducing the amount of energy it takes to answer simple questions, find a form, or learn a best practice, Marin County is improving public servants’ day to day lives. 

As California continues to grapple with providing permanent housing for the homeless, Marin County has assembled an incredible array of individuals and organizations who are deeply passionate, committed and focused on what works. The results — material reduction in homelessness — speak for themselves. 

"This is a county one could be deeply proud of working for and working with," Moran concluded. "We have our gaps, and that's part of what Roundtable is helping to address. We’ve made progress, yes. And we’re not stopping any time soon.”

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