In 2015, Laura Zeilinger became director of Washington, D.C.’s Department of Human Services (DHS) and embarked on a journey to transform the District’s approach to supporting families at risk of or experiencing homelessness. A catalyst for the transformation was closing D.C. General, a homeless shelter with approximately 600 children and a long history of challenges, including the tragic disappearance of an eight-year-old girl from the facility in 2014. More broadly, the transformation entailed pursuing a comprehensive strategy to combat family homelessness through innovative systems change. This included providing access to shelter year-round in policy though not in law, launching preventative services, and providing improved services in shelters to reduce the length of time that people spent there and help them transition to permanency more quickly.

This case study traces Zeilinger’s decade-long reinvention effort as well as the triumphs and challenges she experienced and the questions she grappled with along the way. Among them: How would she create a vision with the mayor to pursue a multi-pronged strategy for reinventing the city’s services? How would she help other stakeholders in the system believe in the possibility of transformation and make sense of the direction the District was heading? How would she overcome political resistance and build a collaborative effort? What organizational capabilities and cultural competencies would DHS need to develop? Once the department achieved its goal of closing D.C. General and setting up a more effective system, how could it sustain its momentum to build on these efforts and continue to pursue needed changes? How would she position DHS to succeed after she stepped down?