| Notes |
Destination: Home was among the earliest interested parties in pursuing PFS contracting in the county. Their investigation of how the mechanism might help advance their mission intrigued a number of influential community leaders and provided a tan- gible illustration of how PFS might be a valuable tool in Santa Clara County. Months prior to Santa Clara County’s Pay for Success efforts, Destination: Home had engaged the Economic Roundtable, a nonprofit research organization, to quantify the scope and cost of social services consumed by the neediest members of Santa Clara’s homeless population.
Santa Clara County supported this data collection effort, which drew from multiple County databases
that had previously existed in silos. This data proj- ect was designed to create both a historical analysis of the highest users of County services, and a tool to identify those at risk of suffering most from the chal- lenges of chronic homelessness. This initiative’s prog- ress led a number of stakeholders to quickly identify chronic homelessness as a highly attractive candidate for Pay for Success contracting. PFS contracting re- lies on exactly this kind of data sharing in order to quantify government savings and evaluate outcomes. Destination: Home provided evidence that it was possible to aggregate and analyze County data across different human service databases. Their success in this effort represented progress that could acceler- ate a future PFS effort’s analysis of the benefit to the County from a reduction in chronic homelessness. |