Analogous Immersion: Homeless System Simulation
Date: March 2nd, 2017
Participants: Amanda Berusch, Sarah Reihl, Matthew McCormick, Paul Cepak, Yuwei Tu, and Parker Mathes
Simulation Summary:
The Homeless System Simulation is an activity that is meant to help participants understand how the homeless assistance system works. Moreover, this simulation aims to show participants the struggles and complexities of working most effectively to help a homeless population with limited resources. This simulation incorporates actual data extracted from homeless systems all around the country. We chose this option for our analogous immersion because we have information from the user (homeless population), however we felt that gaining insight from the perspective of the “system” would be beneficial, as well.
The Way it Works:
Each player is assigned a certain position within the homeless assistance system. These positions are represented in the form of cards, which include Intake, Emergency Shelter, Rapid Re-Housing, Outreach, Transitional Housing, and Permanent Housing. The homeless population is represented by a number of beads on each card. Through different rules and strategies implemented in the simulation, each player’s goal is to have the least amount of beads on their card by moving their population to permanent housing. Player actions can include adding a program, opening a diversion column, or converting a program. Total beads on each player’s card are tallied up at the end of each round.
Key Insights:
Solving the problem of chronic homelessness is not easy, especially from the side of the “assistance system”. There are such limited resources to the point that moving people to permanent housing becomes a strong challenge. This game has showed us that not only are resources scarce, but also that there are variables that can change the way you allocate them at any time. This ambiguity increases the challenge of moving people to permanent housing even more. We must have a resolution in times of uncertainty in our solution/proposal.