According to the research from the SF government, the top three responses for the cause of homelessness were “lost job”(21%), residence problem(14%), and “alcohol or drug usage”(12%). This survey also revealed that “lost job” was the primary reason to cause homelessness for the last 6 years in SF (Applied Survey Research, 2022). Moreover, not having a job not only leads to experiencing homelessness but also obstructs homeless people from getting out of the state of homelessness. This is proven by the fact that 24% of the homeless population responded that “no job” blocked them from affording permanent housing (Applied Survey Research, 2022). In short, unemployment both causes and maintains the homeless population in SF, hindering the reduction of the number of homeless people.
What contributes to this unemployment problem? In 2019, the SF government found out that “no permanent address” is the primary obstacle to employment for homeless people (Applied Survey Research, 2022). Having a permanent address is an essential part of a job application since employers have to send important letters (Keiling, 2021). Homeless people do not possess permanent housing, so it seems to be obvious that they have no permanent address. Even if they have temporary housing, also known as accommodation services, they cannot use their mailbox for personal usage in most cases (Robbins, 2019). In short, no permanent residence and not having enough mail-receiving services from accommodation services are two main factors contributing to this problem of not having a permanent address for the job application process. Considering that no permanent residence is a general characteristic of homelessness (U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, 2011), the problem that could be easily mitigated with a proper solution is insufficient mail-receiving services provided by accommodation services for job-seeking homeless people..
To track the current state and future change of this subproblem precisely, the scale of the problem is specified to the homeless population in the Tenderloin district. The Tenderloin was selected as an important district to collect homeless data as an official government document, so it can be a representative area of SF homelessness.
Within this scale, the goal state is to reduce the percentage of homeless people who responded that not having a permanent address is the primary obstacle to having a job from 21% to less than 15%. 15% is the lowest of the top five employment obstacles for the homeless (Applied Survey Research, 2022), so having less than 15% response means the problem became less significant than other obstacles, enabling the resources to be allocated for other employment obstacles.
Still, there is an obstacle associated with reaching this goal state: limited mailbox size. Typically, the mailing service of accommodation services utilizes their existing mailbox, it has a maximum number of letters it can store at once (Robbins, 2019). This means the solution must address this obstacle by finding a way to extend the size of the mailbox flexibly according to demand.
Meanwhile, there is a constraint of a limited budget. While limited mailbox size can be addressed with an appropriate solution to increase its size, considering that this project is executed by an NGO, there will be a maximum amount of financial support invested in the solution. In other words, the NGO will have a limit to the money it can gain from its donors for this project. Therefore, the solution should work within the budget constraint.
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