What we're building
A coordination layer. Five parts.
Plain English, real architecture, honest status.
Every component below is either Built (working on the alpha, click through and try it), Scaffolded (data model and emit logic exist, awaiting production data), or Planned (on the roadmap after pilot validation). No vaporware. No marketing.
How it fits together
One connected toolkit, not five loose tools.
The five components aren't separate apps — they're one loop. Each hands the next something real, so a person's trust and the basics they need carry forward instead of starting over at every door. It's a coordination and dignity layer — it helps; it doesn't claim to cure homelessness.
The loop closes on itself: the trust ladder someone builds at the map and the meal counter is the same record the discharge layer reads the next time they hit a crisis. One toolkit — built once, then configured per surface (the populations below).
A mobile resource map
A map on your phone — no app to install, no account, no ID — that shows what's open near you, right now.
Plain English
Tap a pin to see the meal site, shelter, charging station, library, bus stop, or clinic. See the hours. See what to bring. Works on free library Wi-Fi if your data plan ran out.
It's 8 PM. You need a bed tonight and breakfast in the morning. You open the map. A local shelter has open beds. Breakfast at a nearby church starts at 9 AM. You walk there. That's it.
A real example
Resources are being verified across Lancaster and Palmdale. Production target: 30-50 per pilot city, with auto-verified hours via partner check-ins.
How it works
- 01User opens /map (no auth required)
- 02Map loads with category filters (meal · shelter · charging · transit · medical)
- 03Tap a pin → details: address, hours, what to bring, partner verifier name
- 04All Tier 0 resources reachable without an account
Meal credits, not cash
A way for people to give you a meal at a real restaurant without ever handing you cash.
Plain English
Someone donates $10. That becomes a “lunch credit” on your phone. You walk into a participating restaurant during their slow hours (8:30-10:30 AM, 2-4 PM, 7:30-9 PM), show the QR code, get served, sit at a table like anyone else. The restaurant gets paid from the donation pool.
Why not cash: cash can be lost, stolen, or spent on anything. A meal credit can only buy a meal. The dignity is the same. The accountability is better. Local restaurants get business during their slow hours instead of empty tables.
A real example
Donor sends $25 via /support. Credits a Tier 1 user's account with 2 lunch credits + 1 dinner. User redeems at a partner restaurant; the restaurant's daily redemption total settles weekly via Stripe.
How it works
- 01Donor: /support → Stripe Checkout → donation lands in Meal Pool
- 02Partner staff: /partner/issue → issues credit to verified user
- 03User: /credits → views balance + rotating QR code (regenerates every 60s)
- 04Partner: /partner/redeem → scans QR → credit deducted, partner credited
A portable trust ladder
A record of you keeping your word over time, that you can show to anyone — an employer, a landlord, a recovery program.
Plain English
Every time you do something reliable — show up to a meal you said you'd attend, complete a community-help hour, keep a partner appointment — it gets recorded. Over months you build a real, time-stamped record. You move up tiers: 0, 1, 2, 3, 4.
Why it matters: a landlord won't rent to someone with no track record. A job won't hire someone with no resume. The trust ladder is the record you didn't have a way to build.
A real example
Six months in, a user has 23 on-time shifts, 2 community-help hours, 3 completed care-coordinator appointments. They walk into the county health & social services office. The caseworker pulls the Guardian record. The user qualifies for a housing voucher they couldn't have qualified for last year.
How it works
- 01Tier 0: anonymous resource access
- 02Tier 1: email-verified user, can hold credits
- 03Tier 2: partner-verified in person, advanced credits + employer referral
- 04Tier 3: stabilized — housing, employment, completed appointments — eligible for voucher programs
- 05Tier 4: Guardian-tier — onboarding others, mentoring, network effects
A coordination dashboard for cities
A live screen the county can open to see where demand is, where capacity is, and where the gaps are — by city, by service type, by time of day.
Plain English
For staff: you stop hand-compiling spreadsheets for HHAP and CoC reports. You see shelter demand spike in one part of the Antelope Valley at 4 PM on Wednesdays and route the outreach team there. You see exactly where HHAP funds not yet fully deployed are bottlenecked. You unblock it.
For funders: cleaner data = stronger federal grant applications = more dollars to the county. HHAP-6's second-half disbursement is conditional on prior-round expenditure. This dashboard is what unlocks it.
A real example
Tonight: shelter capacity in Lancaster at 91%, auto-routing overflow to Palmdale. MAT bridge prescriptions outstanding: 2. DC-7843 (PHF discharge tomorrow) has no bed reserved — staff sees the red status, intervenes manually.
How it works
- 01Real-time aggregate from Bitfocus Clarity (HMIS) + Sheriff release roster + Behavioral Health discharge planner
- 02Demand visualizations by city, service type, time window
- 03Spend velocity charts vs. HHAP-6 quarterly targets
- 04Alert escalation for handoffs at risk (no bed, no MAT, no appt)
- 05Quarterly export buttons: HHAP-6 expenditure, CoC APR, BHOATR rows
A discharge-coordination layer
A single screen showing, in real time: who's about to be discharged from a jail, a psychiatric hold, or a foster-care placement; what they need next; and whether a bed, an appointment, or a voucher is actually waiting.
Plain English
Today, none of those systems talk to each other. Someone walks out of county jail at 11 AM with a CalAIM prescription bridge that needs to be filled by tomorrow, a behavioral-health appointment scheduled for next week, and nowhere to sleep tonight. The warm-handoff plan exists on a piece of paper. Half the time it falls through. The next time the county sees that person is in the ER, the jail again, or the homeless count.
This screen catches them. It checks the bed. It confirms the appointment. It bridges the prescription. It shows the case manager a checklist that's actually current. The handoff completes.
A real example
DC-7841: jail release scheduled 16:30 today. Bed held at a local shelter. BH appt confirmed for tomorrow 09:00. MAT bridge active. Status: green. The Sheriff release deputy sees the same checklist the shelter staff sees, and so does the BH coordinator at the hospital.
How it works
- 01Sheriff jail release roster (next 72h) → Guardian discharge event
- 02Reconcile Medi-Cal eligibility (CalAIM pre-release tag)
- 03Reserve bed at appropriate shelter or PSH placement
- 04Schedule BH appointment if needed
- 05Confirm MAT prescription bridge (active / pending / unscheduled)
- 06Emit Implementation Monitoring Report rows for DHCS quarterly
One coordination layer, multiple surfaces
Today's focus is homelessness. The same layer could serve more.
The same data joins and reporting infrastructure that power today's homelessness work could also support:
- · Justice-involved reentry — CalAIM-Reentry coordination, where no local county-side discharge tool exists today
- · Behavioral-health discharge — crisis-bed capacity is being expanded, with no warm-handoff tooling announced
- · Foster youth aging out — the local foster-care count is being gathered; the FURS model already requires NYTD outcome reporting
- · Domestic-violence survivors — separate VAWA-comparable schema required; Antelope Valley DV figures being gathered
- · Veterans in transition — the local unhoused-veteran count is being gathered; the region has a significant veteran population
- · Recovery and SUD discharge — local overdose and opioid-settlement figures are being gathered; sobering-center capacity is being expanded
Antelope Valley homelessness gets all our attention until it works. The other surfaces would come online as configurations of the same coordination layer — not new platforms.