LELI is a replicable framework for institutionalizing meaningful engagement of subject matter experts with lived experience. Here's the methodology — what consultants learn, how they're deployed, and why the model is built for county scale.
The people who have navigated your county's systems hold knowledge no survey, dataset, or professional training can replicate: what services feel like from the inside, which handoffs hold, and where a small change would make an outsized difference.
Preparation is what makes that knowledge fully actionable.
A consultant who understands your governance structure knows which body to bring a finding to — and when in the cycle it can still shape the decision.
A consultant fluent in your funding streams knows which recommendations are achievable within existing dollars — and which need a different vehicle.
A consultant who can read a strategic plan and interpret performance data connects what the community is experiencing to what the county can act on.
That's the refinement LELI institutionalizes. The experience stays the foundation. The preparation makes it deployable.
Coordinated entry, homelessness response governance, behavioral health, public health, aging services, workforce boards — the infrastructure people with lived experience have navigated is largely administered at county scale.
Because lived experience spans multiple systems, one prepared consultant can advise across several county departments. Counties can co-fund a shared roster and multiply the return on a single preparation investment.
A county implementation serves every city and unincorporated area within it — one standing program instead of a patchwork of local efforts.
Cities — particularly large cities with their own service systems — can adapt the framework as well. Every implementation is scoped to the structure it serves.
Consultants are recruited from the communities the county's plans are written for: people with current or former lived experience of homelessness, who have navigated the county's response systems firsthand — and usually several neighboring systems as well.
Recruitment is community-rooted and designed to reach the experts counties most want to hear from: people living unsheltered, families in vehicles, youth on their own, veterans, elders, returning citizens, and people navigating homelessness alongside disability, mental health, or recovery. No policy background is required. That's what the preparation builds.
Structured preparation across five domains:
How the county actually works: which departments deliver which services, how governance bodies relate, how money flows in and through, and how decisions move from proposal to policy.
Deep working knowledge of the systems consultants will advise on — coordinated entry, data and performance infrastructure, continuum of care governance, funding mechanisms, eligibility structures — plus the neighboring systems each consultant has navigated.
How to read a strategic plan. How to interpret system performance data. How to translate firsthand knowledge into findings that are documented, specific, and mapped to decisions a department can actually make.
Running community feedback sessions, verifying patterns, documenting reasoning, and delivering findings in the formats decision-makers use — written submissions, testimony, briefings.
Consultants learn to direct AI to handle scale — reading thousands of community inputs, translating across languages, flagging patterns — while judgment, interpretation, and meaning-making stay in human hands.
Phase One also includes structured introductions to county staff and system partners, so the working relationships consulting depends on are in place before deployment begins.
Consultants move into active advisory work across the county's real processes:
Reviewing drafts and delivering formal input while plans are being written.
Advising on program design as participants, helping implementation stay true to each plan's intent.
Reading system performance data alongside community feedback to assess what's working, for whom, and what could work better.
Leading feedback sessions with people currently navigating county systems, keeping findings grounded in what the community is experiencing right now.
LELI is not a cohort that ends. It's standing county infrastructure:
Each preparation cycle adds consultants; the county's advisory capacity compounds rather than resets.
Prepared consultants continue working with departments beyond their first year — carrying institutional knowledge across policy cycles, budget years, and plan updates.
As the program matures, recruitment becomes rolling, and experienced consultants help prepare the next generation.
Meaningful engagement stops being a per-project procurement and becomes a permanent county capacity.
Every implementation is scoped to your structure, priorities, and scale. For consultants: your experience is the foundation — the preparation is what we build together.