Opinion: The Vulnerability Index

Published November 2009 Vol. 13 Issue 10

by columnist: Chris Conner

Chris Conner is an outreach worker in Denver and a column writer for the Denver VOICE.

For most of us the idea of being woken from the depth of sleep by strangers directs our imagination to very foreboding scenarios: hospital calls regarding loved ones, criminal attacks, panic calls from friends in trouble, and other apprehensive bumps in the night.  At 4:30 a.m. on October 14, I was that kind of creep, rousing a homeless man from a pitch-black church stairwell and encouraging him to complete a survey that will establish a “Vulnerability Index” of the street-homeless individuals who are most at risk of dying next year. My hood was black and in retrospect I must have appeared like Death descending the staircase before I offered him a $5 fast food gift card for participating in the study.

The VI is designed to prevent mortality among people in his very situation through rapid housing. It is a strange and benevolent intrusion that even the ACLU would not know how to buck against.
The information I get from the Vulnerability Index, which will ultimately be completed in Denver over three pre-dawn mornings in January, is supposed to make my job as a street outreach case manager more direct.  It should yield me a triaged catalogue, including pictures, of those on the streets most in need of housing according to likelihood of death.  From there my job is pretty clear: get these people into housing before they die on the street.

But not quite.  The Vulnerability Index may belie the fact that housing options are often scarce for those most in need, as well as the rest.  Common Ground, an organization facilitating Vulnerability Index studies in 50 cities, will respond to the Indexes’ deep, dark, truthful mirrors by launching a campaign this month for 100,000 housing placements nationwide. 

Katie Symons, outreach coordinator for Denver’s Road Home, is excited to use the index to bring the campaign to Colorado, while creating outreach services that are “a lot more intentional about whom we are identifying and for whom we are setting aside housing resources.”  Symons hopes that the survey will be a versatile tool that can be used in different environments, such as shelters and day programs, to help service providers and the general public better understand the relationship between street-level homelessness and death. It’s a grim relationship that, if anything, gives all of us the grounds for thinking about and articulating our own responsibilities and hopes to end homelessness.

At 4:30 in the morning it is not exceptionally hard to find that hope.  I find it in the ghostly darkness of a church stairwell—one of 49 sites in a 30-block territory where outreach workers collected data on October 14th—as a man’s cold hand moves in and out of a cell phone screen’s glow to sign a consent form before I proceed to ask him about his health.  

For more information about the Vulnerability Index and the 100,000 Homes Initiative visit :
www.commonground.org. 

To reply to this story with comments or questions, Chris Conner can be reached at chris@denvervoice.org


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