Upstream facilitates homelessness workshop with over 200 Austin stakeholders

The Downtown Austin Alliance, ECHO, and Austin mayor Steve Adler, kicked off a Solving Homelessness workshop facilitated by Upstream at St David’s Episcopal Church. Over 200 community leaders and stakeholders of the homeless challenge participated.

The workshop first aligned the diverse perspectives of participants to a holistic and experiential view of the homeless pathway; how people become homeless, why they struggle to break out of the cycle of homelessness, and why they relapse after being housed. Then the workshop focused on collaboratively identifying solutions and partnerships to prevent people from becoming homeless, break the cycle of homelessness, and develop stability after being housed. Participants walked away with a better understanding of how their efforts fit within the overall ecosystem working on the homeless challenge and solutions they can own and move forward with.

“It’s rare to have an opportunity to bring all the stakeholders in the homeless ecosystem together. By aligning them to a common perspective of the pathways into and out of homelessness, they could see how their programs and incentives effect each other, and how they could better collaborate for greater overall impact.”

- Paul Kramer, Partner at Upstream