HMIS 101: What Federal Reports Use the Data in HMIS?

A critical aspect of the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act, as amended, is a focus on viewing the local homeless response as a coordinated system of homeless assistance options as opposed to homeless assistance programs and funding sources that operate independently in a community.

A Homeless Management Information System (HMIS) is the information system designated by a local Continuum of Care (CoC) to comply with the requirements of CoC Program interim rule 24 CFR 578. It is a locally implemented data system used to record and analyze client, service, and housing data for individuals and families who are homeless or at risk of homelessness.

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) requires all homeless services providers in the country to participate in a series of annual reports. These reports seek to leverage the data collected by providers to increase our understanding of who is experiencing homelessness in the United States and what interventions are most effective at ensuring instances of homelessness are rare, brief, and non-recurring.

Annual Federal Reports

These annual projects translate to four annual HUD reports:

Point-In-Time Count (PIT)

The Point-in-Time Count (PIT)is a count of the total number of persons experiencing homelessness on a single night. Across the country, service providers and volunteers team up to interview and count those who are staying in transitional housing, emergency shelters, and places not meant for human habitation. Manually-collected data is combined with the information stored in HMIS to generate the final tally.

Housing Inventory Count (HIC)

A companion to the PIT, the Housing Inventory Count (HIC) is a count of the total number of persons on a single night that are sheltered in homeless-dedicated housing. The HIC also gathers information from transitional housing and emergency shelter projects to determine the total number of beds available for persons experiencing homelessness. To achieve the most accurate accounting, data from agencies participating in HMIS is joined with that from non-participating entities.

System Performance Measures (SPMs)

Fed by HMIS data, System Performance Measures (SPMS) are set of HMIS reports that evaluate the homeless services system, and are designed to:

Help Continuum of Care (CoC) communities understand how their system is functioning,
Help CoC's determine if they have deployed the right combination of strategies and resources, and
Gauge a CoC's progress toward the goal of ending homelessness.

In addition, HUD uses this system-level performance information as a competitive element in its annual CoC Program Competition.

Longitudinal Systems Analysis (LSA)

Like SPMs, the Longitudinal Systems Analysis (LSA) report is entirely produced from HMIS data. The LSA provides HUD and CoCs with critical information about how people experiencing homelessness use their system of care.

Responsibilities

Each of the following stakeholders has responsibilities to these mandated federal projects:

CoC leadership: Responsible for coordinating the data review and submission process.
HMIS end users: Responsible for reviewing their organization's data and making all necessary updates.
HMIS lead agency (ICA): Responsible for supporting CoC leadership and HMIS users to ensure that the most accurate and complete information is in HMIS for submission to HUD.