Periodic Evaluations of Risk Assessments: Identifying Families for Homelessness Prevention Services

The New York City Homebase program is one of only a few comprehensive U.S. homelessness prevention programs. To ensure that in-depth services are provided to families most at risk of homelessness, Homebase utilizes a structured assessment, the Risk Assessment Questionnaire (RAQ), developed using 2004-2008 data. We evaluated the RAQ's performance in a more recent cohort of 48,450 families with children applying for Homebase services from 2013 to 2016, testing the predictive power of the current assessment, as well as the power of existing and potential new individual items, using Cox survival models to predict homeless shelter application. The RAQ threshold for in-depth services still effectively identifies shelter risk (13.7%, vs. 5.9% for those below the threshold), suggesting that services are being directed to the highest-risk families. Simulations of a modified RAQ reflecting regression results and program leadership input present assessment adjustments to consider to improve its efficiency and predictive power.