Poster

Client Context

Atlanta Mission is a non-profit dedicated to serving individuals experiencing homelessness in Atlanta through emergency services, residential programs, and long-term support. The organization includes multiple campuses and services, including emergency shelter, meals, addiction recovery, job training, and transitional housing. Residents may move from one campus to another as they transition through the system. The campuses include Restoration House (RH), My Sisters House (MSH), The Shepards Inn (TSI), and The Potters House (TPH). 

Transformational Model 

Atlanta Mission's client transformation system, which guides individuals experiencing homelessness through 4 structured phases of care from intake to long-term stability. The resources that flow through the transformational model are residents, staff, and services that the Mission offers.  

The system begins when a client enters intake and ends when they transition to independent living. Upon intake, residents are assigned a persona based on their attributes and personal history. Personas allow staff to tailor programming intensity and identify each resident’s unique needs. Residents will be assigned to one of the following: Core, Comprehensive, Substance, Mental Illness (removed from analysis), or Disability. For more information of personas, see Appendix B. After Intake, residents in need are taken to emergency services while others move on to short-term shelter. In short-term shelters or Phase 2, residents can take optional courses as they regain some stability in their lives.  

Our project focuses on phase 3 or the Path to Employment.  Phase 3 is the most intensive phase of the transformational model. Upon entry to Phase 3 residents complete a Bio-Psycho-Social Assessment, assigned an advocate to help guide them through the rest of the program, and sign-up to take various social, emotional, spiritual, or vocational courses. When residents finish 80% of the courses and gain advocate approval, they move to the final portion of Phase 3, The Next Steps. Here, residents participate in a four-week intensive program focusing on hard and soft skills to prepare for employment. To successfully complete Phase 3, a resident must save three thousand dollars, gain employment, and have the approval of their advocate to move to the fourth and final phase, independent living.  

Within the program a resident can achieve three outcomes; program success, external successful exit, or an unsuccessful exit. A ‘program success’ indicates that a resident has successfully completed all requirements and phases. An ‘external successful exit' indicates that a resident has successfully found housing or employment on their own via a variety of methods; this is still considered a successful exit. An ‘unsuccessful exit’ indicates that a resident was asked to leave the program due to lack of motivation or behavioral infractions. 

The goal of the Atlanta Mission is to support residents' transition from homelessness to sustained independence through the structured care of their transformational model. Within that, specific operational objectives are: 

  • Efficient Client Progression – Ensure clients move through each phase of the model.
  • Balanced Resource Allocation – Allocate staff, classes, and facilities in proportion to resident needs.
  • Data Driven Decision Making – Use collected historical data to integrate predictive tools that enable proactive planning rather than reactive adjustments.
  • Resident-Centered Approach – maintain quality of care and dignity while improving efficiency. 

Stakeholders internally include our client connection James Barrel (CIO), operational staff (phase leaders, advocates, volunteer staff), and residents within the program. 

Project Objective

Staff at Atlanta Mission consistently described Phase 3 as the point where residents either begin developing sustainable habits or disengage from the program. Although this phase receives the most time and resources, outcomes do not reflect that investment: only 58 percent of residents advance to independent living, and success varies by persona, course participation, and staff assignment. These challenges slow resident progression, strain advocate capacity, and limit the Mission’s ability to support new residents.

Our project aims to address these issues by identifying patterns in historical resident data that explain which services and factors are most associated with successful program completion. By modeling resident outcomes and creating the Service Regression Tool, we provide staff with a way to understand how course selection, attendance, and advocate experience influence success. These opportunities support earlier intervention, more intentional curriculum planning, and better alignment of staff resources with resident needs, helping Atlanta Mission move closer to its goals of improving outcomes and increasing program throughput.

Design Strategy

Our design strategy centered on creating an interpretable, data-driven model that could help staff understand which factors most influence resident success in Phase 3. We began by collecting and merging resident journey, class participation, and advocate data from Atlanta Mission’s Salesforce system, filtering the dataset to include only residents who entered Phase 3. To ensure data quality, we removed records with missing or unclear class information and excluded variables directly tied to success, such as exit reason, to avoid inflating relationships.
 

We tested several modeling approaches, including Random Forest, a baseline logistic regression, and a LASSO logistic regression. Random Forest offered strong performance but limited interpretability, while the baseline logistic model suffered from multicollinearity. LASSO regression provided the best combination of accuracy and interpretability by penalizing correlated predictors and reducing the model to the most meaningful features

Deliverables

Service Regression Tool (SRT)
We developed a LASSO-based logistic regression tool that allows staff to input a resident’s characteristics, attendance rate, and selected courses to generate a predicted probability of program success. Staff can toggle among 38 courses to compare how different curriculum paths influence the outcome. This tool helps solve the client’s core problem by making resident progression more predictable and enabling staff to tailor service plans based on data rather than guesswork.

We provided instructions for how Atlanta Mission’s data team can run the Python-based tool, modify file paths, retrain the model as new data becomes available, and interpret results for operational use. 

Course and Curriculum Recommendations
Using model outputs and odds ratios, we identified the highest- and lowest-performing classes and created specific curriculum recommendations, including:
• Making “Planning to Succeed” required for all residents
• Making “Relational Equity” optional instead of required
• Recommending “Inform & Inspire” for Core residents
• Recommending “Emotional Regulation” for Comprehensive residents
These recommendations target the inconsistency in Phase 3 course outcomes and help staff direct residents toward the most effective services.

Value and Impact

The revised curriculum recommendations provide clear value by increasing the likelihood that residents successfully complete Phase 3 and advance toward independent living. To estimate this impact, we conducted a what-if analysis in which 84 historical residents were hypothetically reassigned to the updated curriculum. The model predicted an 11 percent increase in program success, demonstrating that small, targeted adjustments to required and persona-specific courses can meaningfully improve outcomes.

Project Information

Fall 2025
The Atlanta Mission

Student Team

Catherine Akins

Jeffrey Kuang 

Andrew Horton

Hyejoo Jeong

Elizibeth Lazarus

Adam Jones

Pierce Thomas

Faculty Advisor

Faculty Evaluator