San Francisco Rations Housing by Scoring Homeless People's Trauma. By Design, Most Fail to Qualify.
Co-published with ProPublica. Tabitha Davis had just lost twins in childbirth and was facing homelessness. The 23-year-old had slept on friends’ floors for the first seven months of her pregnancy, before being accepted to a temporary housing program for pregnant women. But with the loss of the twins, the housing program she’d applied to live in after giving birth — intended for families — was no longer an option. A few weeks later, Davis was informed that the score she’d been given based on her answers to San Francisco's "coordinated entry" questionnaire wasn’t high ...