Connor Schoen, Co-founder of Breaktime in Boston

Connor Schoen, co-founder of Breaktime in Boston, thoughtfully addresses the root causes of young adult homelessness and effective measures to break the persistent cycle of homelessness.

Episode Transcript

(00:02):
Welcome back to What's at Risk.I'm Mike Christian. Break Time co founders
Connor Shoon and Tony Schue met asundergraduate students at Harvard while working at the
Wide to Wise shelter for young adultsexperiencing homelessness. After noticing young adults staying
at the shelter wanted to work andlearning that stable employment is the most critical

(00:25):
factor in achieving stable housing, theyfounded break Time in twenty eighteen with a
mission to break the cycle of youngadult homelessness. In twenty twenty one,
Honor and Tony were winners of Forbes'thirty Under thirty Award for Social Impact.

(00:45):
Well, hello everyone, We're herewith Connor Shoon, co founder and executive
director of break Time. Break Time'smission is to break the cycle of homelessness
by equipping young adults with a joband financial security they need to establish housing
security. Connor, you co foundedbreak Time in twenty eighteen and have dedicated

(01:06):
yourself to this mission. Maybe tellus a little bit about your background and
your path in life. Well,first of all, thank you so much
Mike for having me on the show. It's always great to have the opportunity
to share more about the work,and it's really important that people know about
it. My journey with break Time, it really all started back in twenty
seventeen when I was working at ayouth shelter called Why to Why in Cambridge.

(01:29):
Why To Why I work specifically witheighteen to twenty four year olds experiencing
homelessness, which is a really uniquedemographic of young people for whom homelessness has
come because of transitioning out of thefoster care system, because of getting kicked
out after coming out, and otherreasons that you really impede a young person's

(01:51):
ability to enter adulthood, to explorewho they are, to explore what they
want to do, and to doall the things that every single young person
deserves the opportunities and work to do. And so when I was nineteen,
when I was working at this shelter, I was in my own process of
coming out when I realized that fortypercent of young people experiencing homelessness are LGBTQ

(02:12):
plus and the experience I had workingin the shelter with young people my age
who are experiencing an incredibly different setof circumstances was something that completely changed my
life inspired me to be more authenticto who I am and also inspired me
to start break Time because I sawthe gaps in the system, in the
ways in which these young people werenot being fully supported, and specifically,

(02:36):
as you mentioned in the intro,there's a gap when it comes to job
and financial security for young people.We all need job in financial security to
sustain housing. And while there arehousing organizations that exist, I really saw
an opportunity to start something new toconnect young people with the economic opportunities that
can help them actually sustain that housing. I saw stat which is amazing to

(02:59):
me, one in ten young peopleages eighteen to twenty four experience homelessness in
a given year in the United States. That seems like a staggering number to
me. You touched on some ofthe reasons, but what are some of
the underlying causes of that, becausethat's just ten percent of our young people?
Seems crazy. That stat, outof shape at Hall at the University

(03:22):
of Chicago, implies that over fourmillion young people in a given year will
experience some form of homelessness, andI want to emphasize a few key things
about that stat. One is thatthe way it defines homelessness is broad in
a way that it should be broadbecause the young people that are counted in
the surveys experiencing homelessness include young peoplewho have been CouchSurfing, who are doubled

(03:46):
up, who are living somewhere butnot on a lease, who are living
somewhere but it's unsafe or inadequate fortheir needs, or they're living with someone
who's unsafe and violent. So whenyou think about all those ways in which
you can be housing and secure,not just living on the street, not
just living in a shelter, butall of these other aspects that can influence

(04:10):
housing and security, it's a muchbroader spectrum than we think. And at
break Time, we're committed to reallyworking upstream to ensure that we're not only
addressing folks who are in crisis withtheir housing, who might have lost housing,
who are on the streets, whoare in shelters, but working upstream
with folks who are in unstable housingsituations that can be rectified if they can

(04:31):
get on the right path to economicstability and be able to afford and safe,
adequate housing for themselves. It's somethingwe share a lot about our great
time because it reminds us all thatHomelessness is not an narrow issue. It's
a broad issue that affects millions andmillions of people, and for young people,
if we invest in the right solutionsto get them on a path to

(04:54):
economic sustainability, we can actually preventthe type of homelessness that's more visible that
we see in our day to daylives by helping those young people break the
cycle and build stability for themselves.You reference, and a big part of
Break Time's mission is job security.And you know, homelessness is such a
controversial topic. I hear things allthe time and there's a variety of different

(05:17):
perspectives on it. Often you hearwhy can't they just get a job?
So what are those the individuals thatare facing homelessness and experiencing homelessness. What
are the challenges to just getting ajob? This is something that I saw
firsthand when working at the Wide toY Shelter and have seen firsthand ever since

(05:38):
in building up Break Times work.There are many many barriers to young people
experiencing homelessness getting a job. Thenumber one thing is a lack of stability
in their day to day lives.They might be looking for a place to
sleep every single night, which takestime, energy, work, and involves
a ton of stress. It meansthat they're probably having they're probably exhausted,

(06:03):
having underslept, having slept in notgreat conditions, and constantly fighting for stability.
Also, alongside that lack of housingstability comes food in security and other
challenges that get in the way ofthem being able to execute with excellence on
a day to day and their job. And that's really the number one issue,

(06:23):
is that lack of stability, andthat's something that we help young people
to navigate so they can overcome that. But they're also additional barriers. One
of them is that getting an IDfor a young person, even if they've
lived in the same place their entirelife, can be very hard because when
you've moved around a lot, andwhen you're potentially estranged from your parents,

(06:45):
you don't have access to all thesame documentation or it might be completely lost.
Things like your birth certificate might belong gone. So there's barriers logistically
as well as barriers in terms offolks stability. And the last thing I'll
say is that's just there's just alot of stigma. There's a lot of
stigmatization and discrimination of folks experiencing housingnessthat happens in the screening process. But

(07:08):
I think more importantly than just gettinga job, all of these factors also
make it challenging to maintain a job, and having a lack of stability makes
it so hard to show up asyour best self at work every day and
put in your all because the entireday all you can think about is the
fact that you didn't have dinner,breakfast, that you don't have a place

(07:28):
to sleep tonight, and being expectedto perform with excellence in those conditions is
almost impossible. Folks are losing jobswithin a few weeks and they're going back
to square one of having no savings, having no access to housing. So
if we can't help people overcome thatinitial barrier, they're just going to get
stuck in a cycle unless they're tremendouslyresilient and more resilient than almost anyone I

(07:51):
know, and being able to workwith excellence under such adverse conditions. Now,
you just use the word cycle,and I often hear that term the
cycle of homelessness. What exactly isthat cycling? I think by what you
just talked about preceding this question,I can infer a bit of it,
But what's the cycle of homelessness?And then what are some of the ways

(08:13):
that break time breaks that cycle exactly? So, as you alluded to,
that's actually where our name comes from. And the inspiration behind that was the
fact that I get to know alot of people really while wile working at
the shelter. And one of thethings that you really want to see is
after they leave the shelter, youdon't actually want to see them back there
ever again, because you hope thatthey're being given a path and opportunity to

(08:37):
stability and that they never have togo back to a situation where they're having
to stay in a shelter. Unfortunately, all too often I saw folks coming
back. They had gotten a jobfor three or four weeks, that started
to get income, they had foundanother place to say, and then something
happened. They're being set up forfailure because there weren't enough supports in place

(08:58):
and they didn't have access to theright job opportunity that fit their interest in
needs and have access to the righthousing opportunity that was safe and adequate for
them. And so they could findthese short stints of stability, but without
a really robust pathway into a longterm, stable life, and without long

(09:20):
term supports and services, they werejust falling back to square one because they
didn't have the right supports in place. If you don't have the job security
needed to have the income needed forhousing, then you're not going to have
housing and housing security. If youdon't have housing security, as they described,

(09:41):
it's incredibly hard to secure and sustaina job. So that's really the
cycle. Our program model has threemillion parts. Launch Pad, which is
three weeks of job readiness, trainingand financial literacy that happens at the beginning
to get folks work ready. It'sall paid, it's stipended, so we're
investing in their financial security. We'reproviding wrap around supports even before day one

(10:07):
to help them figure out short termhousing solutions that can give them the stability
to engage in that opportunity. Andthen after Launchpad is lift Off, which
is a three month paid job placementwhere we actually hire and staff young people
to work at other job sites basedon their career interests, everything from hospitals
to restaurants and everything in between.During these three months, they get a

(10:30):
great job opportunity that they can potentiallyturn into a full, full time,
long term job while having our supportin us being the employer, so they
don't hit that three to four weekmark something happens they lose their job.
We actually provide a tremendous amount offlexibility. They can take two weeks off,
they can work with our team tofigure out an individual path forward so

(10:52):
that they can get through that firstthree months, have that on their resume,
have a great relationship with an employer, and then for the long term,
through our stable Orbit program, weprovide three years of continue rap brand
support to really help young people fullyovercome that sort of initial inertia to getting
housing secure, job secure, andfinancial secure and help them get on a

(11:16):
long term path of success so thatthis cycle doesn't repeat itself. So that's
really our strategy through that three partmodel. Every single young person needs a
little bit of something different, andthat's why every young person has a pathway
coach on our team, a socialworker who's trained to work with them on
their individual needs. How do youfind young people to come into your program?

(11:37):
How are they referred to you?It's probably a variety of different ways
that you bring them into your program. Maybe just touch on a few at
the end of the day, mostof our recruitment is done through referrals from
other organizations places like why to whyWe're young people are staying, other housing
organizations, organizations providing other services toyoung adults, and it really creates room

(12:00):
for a partnership between break Time andthese other organizations, where we can provide
the services we're best at, theycan provide the services their best at.
We can bring in other partners forgaps that exist, and all together we
can solve the problem versus solving partof the problem and just having the cycle
repeat itself. And so we findthat partnerships and doing cross referrals, both

(12:24):
having young people referred to break Timeand us referring young people to other organization
services is extremely critical and is atthe heart of our value of collaborative innovation
or working together to create social change. Young people can also apply directly to
Break Time on our website at breaktime dot org slash youth. Do you

(12:46):
find that homelessness is generational? Absolutely? Intergenerational poverty is a huge driver of
homelessness. A lot of the youngpeople we serve have experienced homelessness in their
youth under the age of eighteen,they've experienced family homelessness, and many young
people actually become homeless. For thosewho don't become homeless because of a family

(13:09):
conflict, they might have a greatrelationship with their family, but their family
isn't able to support them financially.It's such a privilege to have a family
that can give you a financial safetynet and can support you in times of
need, or that owns property,owns a house that you can stay in
if other things aren't working out inyour life and you need to save on
rent. And that is one ofthose fundamental things that only a very select

(13:33):
few folks have access to, andfor all the other young adults, the
second they turn eighteen, they're treatedlike an adult in the legal system and
the benefit system. And so intergenerationalpoverty directly feeds into young adult homelessness because
young people who don't have that financialsafety net, who don't have the resources

(13:54):
to support them going into young adulthood, aren't able to one get housing and
to invest necessarily in education or somethingthat's not paid because the urgency of every
dollar they make is so high.So we see that repeated again and again,
and I think that's another way inwhich homelessness is cyclical, is that

(14:16):
family homelessness can be get young adulthomelessness, can beget adult homelessness, can
beget family homelessness, and the cyclejust continues. Homelessness is a national problem.
I grew up in California. WhenI go back to Los Angeles and
I lived in San Francisco a bit, it's just dramatic what you see on

(14:37):
the streets in certain parts of bothof those cities. It's heartbreaking on so
many levels. You've talked a lotabout the work that you've done and the
process that you have and the cycleof homelessness. What is the root problem?
Obviously poverty is, and people speculatoit's drugs and alcohol and mental health
and all those types of things,But those aren't the root problems, I

(15:00):
don't think. I think there's somethingeven more basic to that. What are
your thoughts about that. In theUnited States, we've decided as a society
that housing is not a basic humanright, and that is I think the
fundamental reason why homelessness exists. It'struly a policy decision. And I say

(15:20):
that first and foremost because I trulybelieve that homelessness is a solvable problem.
We've seen it grow, we've seenit evolve. It can make people feel
hopeless that there's nothing we can doto solve this problem. But there's key
systemic change that can happen to completelyeradicate this problem, and there are key
things that are not happening that areperpetuating and exacerbating the problem. Our benefit

(15:43):
programs and our social supports should ensurethat folks have access to safe, affordable,
sustainable housing, and once we providethat, that gives them a pathway
to economic sustainability. It has beenwell docued and well studied that investing in
housing for folks, investing in theirability to have stability, leads ultimately to

(16:07):
the government saving money long term onall different types of services, from health
services to benefit programs, and evengaining money from additional tax income that's coming
out of folks paychecks because they're actuallyable to work. And so the only
way to truly break the cycle ofintergenerational poverty, to end homelessness is to

(16:30):
give folks enough support so they canhave enough stability where they can actually invest
in the types of opportunities that willbring them long term economic prosperity and ultimately
save the government and generate money forthe government in the long term. So
that's something I fundamentally believe. Fromthe New York Times, no factor matters

(16:55):
more to homelessness than access to housing. Poverty, meant illness, addiction,
and other issues do play roles,that they are less significant. Many cities
and states in the Midwest and South, for example, have higher rates of
mental illness, poverty, or addictionthan other parts of the United States,
but they have similar or lower ratesof homelessness. What explains regional variation is

(17:21):
housing market conditions, said Great Colburn, a housing expert at the University of
Washington. Housing researchers use the exampleof musical chairs. Imagine there are ten
people for nine chairs. One personweighed down by poor health does not make
it to a chair. Is theproblem that person's health or the lack of

(17:42):
chairs. Homelessness, then, isa supply and demand problem. Without enough
housing, not everyone has a placeto live, and the houses that do
exist cost more as people compete fora limited supply, so more people are
priced out and more or end uphomeless. On a more local level here

(18:06):
in Massachusetts and here in Boston,I really think that we should extend the
right to shelter that we've provided tofamilies where the state this is in question
right now, there's been a capput on the system, but traditionally the
state has said, we will guaranteethat even if the shelter systems are full,
every family in our state will havesuwhere to stay every single night.

(18:29):
I think we need to extend thatfor eighteen to twenty five year olds who
enter the second they turn eighteen,and most young people, myself included,
have had to rely heavily on thesupport of their families during that period.
So I think this is one waythe state can end homelessness is by extending
that right to more people, byinvesting in programs like break Time that can

(18:52):
help to break the cycle and getfolks into a pathway towards economic sufficiency,
and to do what the state hasalready committed to do, which is building
more housing, making more housing that'saffordable. And do you think restrictive rules
around multifamily restrictive zoning rules around multifamilyhousing contributes to this. I'm definitely not

(19:15):
an expert on zoning, but Ithink it's abundantly clear that the answer is
yes, particularly in the suburbs.Restrictions where the vast majority of properties are
zoned as single family and not ableto be zoned as multifamily just constricts the
housing supplies, the housing supply,and it creates a basic economic problem of

(19:37):
there's just not enough places for peopleto live. As the population grows and
the demand supply dynamics are such thatprices are just going to continue to skyrocket
and make it even less affordable andless accessible for someone entering the rental market
like the young people I work withto access housing. So single family zoning

(20:00):
restricts housing supply definitely exacerbates the problem, and so it particularly does that in
transit accessible areas. It's our abilityto create dense pockets of affordable housing,
of multifamily housing that's near transit accessibleareas that connect to job opportunities in the
city or in other places that youcan get to using the train or the

(20:22):
MBTA that is so critical, andI've definitely seen a huge push towards that.
The governor released four plus billion dollarbond bill to help fund investments in
housing and renovations and improvement to existinghousing. That makes complete sense, and
it's a growing problem it's not.Despite the efforts of amazing organizations like break

(20:48):
Time, almostness is still growing atthis point in time in the United States
without a broad constituency of support sortof pushing back at it. And it
certainly includes some of the things youjust talked about. For sure. I
studyed math in college, so Ithink a lot about the numbers and the
numerical challenges that exist here. Forexample, there's almost two and a half

(21:14):
million households in Massachusetts, and soif the population grows, say by one
percent, we're talking about twenty fivethousand additional households. If housing is already
maxed out, if we're not ableto provide housing to the people that already
here, a one percent increase inthe population means building twenty five thousand more

(21:38):
units of housing. And so Ithink as a society we have to be
really comfortable with a tremendously large investmentin fixing this problem, because it's one
of those things, just like makingimprovements to the MBTA that's just going to
get more expensive with time and goingto get harder to rectify with time.
Connor, you and break Time aredefinitely doing a lot to solve this problem.

(22:03):
What's next for you end break Time? Yeah, So I think what's
really special about break Time is ourniche. We have been focused on job,
financial security for young adults experiencing housingand security. It's enabled us to
grow quickly because we've proven that ourspecific model for dealing with the specific niche
challenge has worked and deserves to bescaled and invested in. As I think

(22:29):
about the rest of this decade,the rest of the twenty twenties, we've
been thinking deeply about how break Timecan more systemically end this challenge in the
long term, because that's our goal. It's to break the cycle of young
adult homelessness, to end this asa problem, and then to replicate that
solution to as many places as wecan. And what we've noticed is that

(22:52):
we exist on sort of what Icall a support wheel. If you think
about a wheel on the bike,a lot of different spokes that help to
stabilize it and make it go roundand round. Right now, we are
really strong in job security, reallystrong in financial security, and we've been
very intentional about partnering on everything else, but on every single spoke around that

(23:15):
wheel, whether it's housing, mentalhealth care support, legal support, there
are certain gaps that we can startto fill or that we can reach deeper
to help our young people address thosechallenges. So if there's a lack of
legal support for young people, forexample, if there's a lack of support
for young people getting an ID toget started with a job, these are
all challenges that if we don't addressthem, the work that we're currently doing

(23:40):
is not going to go as faras possible and having the impact we want.
There's certain limitations given the other factorson what's missing in that support wheel.
It's great if you have two titaniumspokes on a bicycle wheel, but
if three of them are missing,you're not going to really expect much from
that wheel. And so that's what'simportant to us right now throughout the next

(24:03):
year is to really explore how dowe more comprehensively address this problem, and
then how do we more systemically ensurea long term elimination of this problem through
policy change, through partnership, andalso by really ensuring that we are thinking
on a systems level about a lotof the questions we've talked about today,

(24:26):
like what are the central drivers ofthis, what are the core causes of
this? And really addressing this headon through some of the policy changes I've
already mentioned in other aspects of ourwork. So we want to go deeper
here in Massachusetts before we expand elsewhere, and that's really going to be the
focus of the twenty twenties, andI'm hopeful that by the end of this

(24:48):
decade we have something that we feellike we can replicate on a larger geographic
scale. But in order to dothat, it's important to get right here
first. And I want to eliminatethis challenge in Massachusetts, not just alleviate
it, not just reduce it,not just reduce the rate of growth,
but to eliminate this challenge because Ithink that I want I'm so proud to

(25:10):
live in the state I live in. I think Massachusetts is such a leader
in so many ways. But Iwant to live in a state where every
single young person is access to theopportunities and support they need to reach their
full potential. Every single young personhas access to the safe, adequate housing
they need to just go through theirdaily life as a young person, explore

(25:32):
their career, explore their potential.So I want to make that happen here
and then let's replicate it everywhere wepossibly can, but let's learn from doing
it on a smaller scale first.So that's really going to be our focus
in the coming years, and overthe next few months we're finalizing a strategic
plan for twenty twenty five to twentytwenty nine of exactly what it looks like

(25:55):
to address more aspects of the supportwheel that an individual young person needs,
while also addressing the systematic factors thatare leading a young person to need that
support in the first place. Well, systems, change and collective impact are
very hard to attain. I thinkone of the best ways to do it
is to replicate a winning program likeBreak Time, and it sounds like your

(26:17):
aspirations are to do that. Sowe've been talking with Connor shown wonderful insights
and just a wonderful job with BreakTime in terms of homelessness for youth in
particular. Thank you so much,Connor, appreciate it. Thank you so
much for having me on. It'salways an honor to be part of these
conversations, and I appreciate the opportunityto educate folks about our work and some

(26:40):
of my observations in the field.A big thank you to our producer Ken
Carberry of Chart Productions. What's onyour mind? Send us your thoughts,
comments, and questions to What's atRisk at gmail dot com. That's one

(27:02):
word, What's at Risk at gmaildot com. Thank you,