@TaylorB We’ve used the Self Sufficiency Standard in our Community Health Needs Assessment for local hospitals and public health accreditation. I really like it in concept, but we ran into two problems. First, unsurprisingly, some of the data they are relying on isn’t measuring what they think it is (at least here). The housing costs are based on a survey that basically only our housing authority fills out, which suggests average rents are about 50% lower than they really are. We adjusted that and I feel ok using it for a guideline.
The second problem is more interesting for this group–the whole point of the self sufficiency standard is that it looks different for different types of households… but no one in a leadership position in my community wants to talk about how different households have different self sufficiency needs, they want to talk about ONE NUMBER that means self-sufficiency, and use census data to say who is above or below that number. Which removes any nuance from the whole conversation. We ended up publishing both–several household profiles and a general self-sufficiency index target. I’m not in love with it, but I’m glad there is some level of nuance alongside the easy-to-talk-about single number.