How Los Angeles Has Used AI to Help Those on the Brink of Homelessness

Classroom Discussion Starters: AI and Housing Insecurity

1. What is the L.A. County Homelessness Prevention unit, and what does it do?
2. Who does the unit seek out to help?
3. How does artificial intelligence help the unit identify people who need help?
4. When does the unit seek to intervene to prevent homelessness?
5. Why is Fred Theus so good at helping clients, according to his colleague Dana Vanderford?

Extension Activity

Data literacy activity: Read this excerpt from the article Can L.A. stop homelessness before it starts? An experimental program wants to find out how people's data is being accessed and used: 

"It was created by the California Policy Lab at UCLA, a research institute that has access to data from county agencies such as the departments of health and social services, which interact with people at their most vulnerable. The Policy Lab sifts through all that data, evaluating some 500 markers to generate a list of individuals and families that its model predicts to be at high risk of becoming homeless. It turns that list over to the Homelessness Prevention Unit and its Housing Stabilization Team."

...The Homelessness Prevention Unit analysts randomly work their way through the names on the high-risk list to come up with two groups of candidates. Half will be offered intervention — a cash stipend and a case manager for four months. The other half will receive nothing and never know they were chosen, but will be monitored through any contacts with county or homeless agencies they make."

Data privacy, also called information privacy, is "the idea that individuals should have visibility, control, and protection over online data collection and use," according to the Salesforce website. How is personal data being used and collected by the university and county government? What questions do you have about personal data being used in this way? How could health data be particularly sensitive?

• Check out this News Hour story about the DNA company 23 and Me.
• Also, see the New York Times article: In Utah, Trump’s Vision for Homelessness Begins to Take Shape: State officials promise large-scale involuntary addiction and mental health treatment at Salt Lake City’s edge. Critics see 'a prison, or a warehouse.'"

Watch the following segment on the impact AI is having on the job market, then discuss:

• Guest Robert Reich divides jobs into "making, thinking and caring" categories, and suggests that "thinking" jobs are most at risk. Do you think "caring" jobs can be enhanced with AI, or do you think they are at risk as well? How does the original segment in this lesson impact your thinking?
• Do you think artificial intelligence is increasing the need for "caring jobs"? Why or why not?

Republished with permission from PBS News Hour Classroom.