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Aras Jizan
"Having up-to-date, reliable data on a community’s homeless population is critical to ending homelessness."
Submitted by Kristin Kellogg on
This Q&A with Aras Jizan was originally published in Community Solutions' 2017 Annual Report.
 
Aras works on the Built for Zero Data Team where he designs, customizes, and implements data tools and analytic frameworks that help communities end chronic and veteran homelessness.
 
What is data analytics?
At a basic level, it’s collecting and looking at information systematically in order to make better decisions.
How Built for Zero communities are using data to help end homelessness
Submitted by Kristin Kellogg on
Homelessness is a constantly shifting problem. In order to effectively solve for it, communities need accurate and up-to-date data on the issue.
 
That's why Built for Zero communities create real-time, person-specific data sets of the people experiencing homelessness in their region. This information is graphed in custom dashboards, powered by Tableau, a data visualization software. These dashboards make it easier for local teams to analyze their data and use it to inform their decision-making.
Dr. Rana Awdish speaking at the Built for Zero Conference and Learning Session
Dr. Rana Awdish on the critical importance of empathy
Submitted by Kristin Kellogg on
In 2008, Rana Awdish was a healthy physician about to complete her fellowship in critical care, and she was pregnant with her first child. Then, everything changed: an undetected tumor in her liver burst, causing her organs to fail, and suddenly she was fighting for her life in the very hospital where she worked.
 
This experience as a patient had a profound impact on Awdish, as she realized the unintentional harm that can be caused by interactions with healthcare providers.
Patrisse Cullors, Co-Founder of Black Lives Matter
Patrisse Cullors on system change, movement building, and homelessness
Submitted by Kristin Kellogg on
Patrisse Cullors, activist, author, and the Co-Founder of Black Lives Matter, delivered a powerful keynote address at the Built for Zero Conference and Learning Session in Detroit earlier this summer. 
 
Cullors’ talk corresponded to one of the tracks of the conference: taking action on structural racism.
Rendering of the Livonia 4 development in Brownsville, Brooklyn
New Housing, Health Supports On the Way in Brownsville
Submitted by Kristin Kellogg on
The City of New York’s Department of Housing, Preservation and Development (HPD) announced last week that Community Solutions and our partners have been selected to create a transformational mixed-use project on long vacant sites along Livonia Avenue in Brownsville.
Quicken Loans CEO Jay Farner and Community Solutions President Rosanne Haggerty at the Built for Zero Conference in Detroit
Communities come together to end homelessness at the Detroit Built for Zero Conference
Submitted by Kristin Kellogg on
This week nearly 600 people gathered in Detroit for the Built for Zero Conference and Learning Session, all on a journey to end homelessness in communities around the country.
 
The event brought together communities in the Built for Zero collaborative and 20,000 Homes Campaign, a partner campaign coordinated by the Canadian Alliance to End Homelessness to help 20 Canadian communities end chronic homelessness by 2020.
This plaque is displayed at the John and Jill Ker Conway Residence in Washington D.C.
A note on the naming of the John and Jill Ker Conway Residence
Submitted by Anonymous on

At the groundbreaking for the John and Jill Ker Conway Residence, Jill Ker Conway shared the following stories about how military service impacted her life and the lives of both her father, William Ker, who fought in World War I, and her husband, John Conway, who fought in World War II. Today this plaque hangs in the John and Jill Ker Conway Residence, a supportive housing residence for formerly homeless veterans in Washington, D.C.

 

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