Navigating Homeless Vulnerability: A Student's Journey into Assessment and Equity

Kyle Rehn has always been interested in social movements and social policy—a passion reflected in his professional pursuits. 

After earning his bachelor’s in economics, he spent several years in the Teach for America program before returning back to the University of Utah to pursue a master’s in economics.  “I wanted to understand micro- and macroeconomics better so I knew ways I could make a more significant impact on social policy,” he said.  In addition to being grounded in a progressive, holistic ethos, the program also provided him an opportunity to gain valuable statistical programming and research methods skills.  Upon finishing this graduate degree, he wanted to work in the nonprofit sector and took a job as a statistical analyst at The Road Home, a Utah agency serving people experiencing homelessness or housing insecurity. 

While there, he became familiar with Service Prioritization Decision Assistance Tools (SPDATs)—a set of four widely used tools designed to assess levels of vulnerability for people experiencing homelessness.  These tools are used to evaluate vulnerability, assigning a score that helps service providers allocate resources and determine who should be prioritized for scarce services including rapid rehousing or permanent supportive housing. 

Simultaneously, a small body of research started to show one of the prioritization decision assistance tools, the VI-SPDAT, had significant validity and reliability issues.  In addition to further examining the reliability and validity of the full set of tools, Mr. Rehn wanted to see if those patterns held in different contexts and what the implications were closer to home.  “I wanted to see if we were seeing similar results with the SPDATs in Utah,” said Mr. Rehn, now a PhD student in the College of Social Work.  “I’m a big believer in expanding the body of research.  The more research you have around a subject, the more confidence you can have in these results.”

Though he likely could have continued to study the tool from the economics department, he decided to pursue his study in the College of Social Work, a decision grounded in the values of social work.  “A lot of fields don’t have the same humanistic approach that social work does,” said Mr. Rehn.  “I wanted to be somewhere academically that shares similar values and drives that I had.”

This dual expertise in economics and social policy is a cornerstone of Mr. Rehn’s research and a major reason he was recently awarded the University of Utah Marriner S. Eccles Graduate Fellowship.  Named after the influential political economist, this award is given to doctoral students with research projects related to political economy and public policy.  “This fellowship will serve as a significant catalyst, empowering me to pursue this vital research and make a lasting impact in the field of homelessness and promoting social justice,” Mr. Rehn said.

His dissertation will include multi-faceted analysis of the SPDAT tools.  Though only one of the four has been extensively studied to date, his dissertation will include measures that test the validity and reliability of all four tools and expand on previous research that has examined the tools including racial, ethnic, and gender bias. “Housing vouchers are huge part of helping people come out of homelessness,” explained Mr. Rehn.  “If they’re not being distributed equitably, this is something we really need to understand more.” Mr. Rehn is planning to incorporate how external forces may have also impacted the validity of the SPDAT assessments into his analysis.

Utah, he says, is an interesting case study to consider because Salt Lake City has had several events recently that may have had major impacts on housing stability, and can still impact the SPDATs validity of determining who is most likely to return to shelter, but have nothing to do with the SPDAT scores.  Events like Operation Rio Grande—a multiagency collaboration aimed at increasing public safety in the Rio Grande neighborhood that involved displacement of a large population of people experiencing homelessness; the decentralization of The Road Home shelter into several new shelters; and an ongoing housing crisis can have a significant impact on when people are accessing shelter and their interactions with service providers for homeless populations.  These factors can not only have an impact on the validity of the SPDAT tool, but can also provide valuable information about how policy and economic shifts affect homelessness.  “My analysis considers how we understand homeless vulnerability assessment’s reliability and validity from a more holistic perspective, an approach that has not been looked at in previous research.”

Though still in the early analysis stages of his dissertation data, Mr. Rehn is excited about the potential impacts of his research.  “This is a really rich time in the development of new and innovative homeless vulnerability assessments.  New research can continue to provide more context and thought-provoking ideas to improve, or even replace, the SPDATs.”  He continued, “Any research done here has such high potential for real world impact.  The more these tools are evaluated the better opportunity we have to identify homeless vulnerability accurately and provide better outcomes for those that are most vulnerable.”