Category: Uncategorized

The new Unsheltered Homelessness resource collection features both new and existing technical assistance materials that highlight innovative approaches to serving households experiencing unsheltered homelessness.

Unsheltered homelessness takes many forms in both urban and rural settings. Those experiencing unsheltered homelessness can be sleeping in locations such as vehicles, abandoned buildings, farms, and in the wilderness.

The resource collection assists different audiences in coordinating efforts, grounded in Housing-First and public health principles, to reduce unsheltered homelessness while improving services, health outcomes, and housing stability among highly vulnerable individuals and families living in unsheltered situations.

The resource collection is organized by topic and audience, such as housing focused outreach and encampment resolution, permanent housing strategies, and data and reporting. The collection also compiles resources specifically developed for Continuums of Care (CoCs) and recipients awarded Unsheltered and Rural Special Notice of Funding Opportunity (Special NOFO) grants, to support local efforts to house people experiencing unsheltered homelessness.

View the Unsheltered Homelessness Resource Collection

Every year, HUD submits an Annual Homeless Assessment Report (AHAR) to the US Congress. The AHAR is a national-level report that provides information about homeless service providers, people and households experiencing homelessness, and various characteristics of that population. It informs strategic planning for federal, state, and local initiatives designed to prevent and end homelessness. The LSA report is produced from each CoC’s Homeless Management Information System (HMIS), and is compiled to create the AHAR report to Congress.

Check out the LSA Report FY 2023 here.

The Rapid Re-Housing Project Performance Report and the Goals and Outcomes reports for 3/1/23 – 2/29/24 have been posted! Click here to view the reports.

Click here to view the reports.

The Q1 2024 HMIS Data Report Cards have been published! Review your agency’s data here!

These report cards look at the main components of Data Quality: Data Completeness, Data Accuracy, and Data Timeliness for the reporting period 1/1/2024 – 3/31/2024.

The first tab of the Report Cards assesses the Data Completeness and Data Accuracy of the Universal Data Elements for each project in our system, and for all our system as a whole. This tab includes:

• The Percentage of enrollments that fall into the following data response categories: Valid Responses, Don’t know/Prefers not to Answer, Data not Collected, Missing Response, and Data Issues.
• The Average Data Completeness Score by project: This is a unique indicator of data completeness for each project.

The second tab of the Report Cards assesses the Data Timeliness of each project of our system. This tab shows the percentage of enrollments that fall into the following length of time categories: 0-3 days, 4-7 days, 16-30 days, and more than 31 days.

The Report Cards can now be filtered by Agency Name. To view the results for a particular agency, navigate to the dropdown labeled “Agency” and make a selection. The report can also be filtered by Project Name.

If you have any questions, please enter a ticket to the HMIS Help Desk.

Street Outreach serves a critical role in the homeless response system, often reaching people who aren’t accessing services in any other way. Incorporating a housing focus into street outreach programs improves outcomes for persons experiencing unsheltered homelessness by eliminating the need to first enter emergency shelter, and instead directly connecting them to safe, stable, permanent housing. Implementing housing-focused street outreach requires a shift from the historical practices of outreach that have focused primarily on addressing basic needs and connection to shelter through light touch services to a more trauma-informed and service intensive model that includes housing navigation.

This webinar series provides an overview of the basics of housing-focused street outreach, highlights communities that are effectively addressing unsheltered homelessness using housing-focused street outreach models and provides clear guidance for shifting the focus of outreach to housing both on the ground and at the system level.

Objectives

• Understand the fundamentals of housing-focused street outreach
• Increase knowledge of the benefits of shifting to housing-focused street outreach
• Understand how other communities are implementing housing-focused street outreach

Audience

This webinar series is intended for Continuum of Care (CoC), Emergency Solutions Grant (ESG), and Special Notice of Funding Opportunity to Address Unsheltered and Rural Homelessness (SNOFO) grant recipients.

Schedule and Registration

Webinar Title	Date and Time	Registration
Building Blocks	April 9, 2024 2:00 – 3:00 PM EDT	Materials Coming Soon
System Support for Housing-Focused Street Outreach	May 16, 2024 3:30 – 5:00 PM EDT	Register Now
Your Questions Answered	June 6, 2024 12:00 – 1:30 PM EDT	Save the Date

You must have a HUD Exchange account to register. Follow these instructions for registering.

Contact

Housing-Focused Street Outreach Webinar Series Register | dusty_olsen@abtassoc.com

Registration is now open for the 12th cohort of the HMIS Data Analytics On-Demand Course. The goal of this immersive course is to provide a conceptual and practical framework for ad hoc reporting utilizing Homeless Management Information System (HMIS) data. This self-paced course is open to anyone in your community who is interested in analyzing, interpreting, and communicating HMIS data.

This is an introductory level course and might be a good fit for newer members of your HMIS team or someone looking to brush up on their data skills. Participants are not expected to have high-level technical or statistical skills; only basic knowledge of the following is needed:

• HMIS data standards
• How to pull an HMIS comma-separated value (CSV) file set, unless the participant has access to someone who can pull HMIS reports for them
• How to enter data into Excel and navigate within it

The data analytics course will equip participants with the skills to create a data brief highlighting trends to engage communities to drive insights into action. A combination of content, hands-on skill-building, and recommended resources are provided to help a basic data user build skills and knowledge necessary to be an advanced data professional while providing opportunities for ongoing professional development and learning. Participants will have eight weeks to complete six course modules at their own pace. Course participants will also receive a certificate upon completion of all six modules.

HUD and the National Homeless Services Data Consortium (NHSDC) are sponsoring a three-day conference titled “Moving Upstream: Data Alliances for Housing Stability” in Kansas City, MO, from April 10-12, 2024. Registration is closed for in-person participation, however registration to join select live webcast sessions is still available.

Register for the Conference

To view live webcast session descriptions, slides, and handouts, visit the NHSDC Spring 2024 conference page on the HUD Exchange. Transcripts and recordings will be made available after the conference. To view the full conference agenda, visit the NHSDC site.

Additional Information

Attendees who attend the following five sessions can earn a certificate of attendance from HUD.

• Getting it Right from the Start: HMIS Project Setup
• Bettering Data Quality to Improve Project and System Level Performance
• Protecting Data While Sharing Data to Prevent and End Homelessness
• Creating Transparency and Improving Partnerships with Good HMIS Governance
• Achieving a Quality and Stable HMIS Team

Abt TA providers, in partnership with Cal ICH, have developed a webinar on Trauma-Informed and Equitable Approaches to Data Collection for grantees and other entities that collect information from people served by the homelessness system and enter data into Homeless Management Information Systems (HMIS). This webinar introduces grantees of California state-funded homelessness programs to concepts related to trauma and its presentation, defines trauma-informed and equitable approaches, and applies this perspective to inform best practices in data collection for HMIS.

The webinar is available to view at the link below, and slides are attached.

Trauma-Informed and Equitable Data Collection in HMIS

• Trauma-Informed and Equitable Data Collection for HMIS.pdf

The Homelessness Prevention Project Performance Report and the Goals and Outcomes Report for 1/1/2023 – 12/31/2023 have been published!

Click here to view the reports.

We are pleased to announce the upcoming HUD Innovations in Ending Homelessness Roundtable Series. This series is a continuation of the Rapid Rehousing Roundtable Discussion Series, which included panel discussions from system leaders, program staff, and people with lived experience of homelessness, to discuss challenges, lessons learned, and innovative new approaches to rapid rehousing. This new series will move beyond the specific focus of rapid rehousing and focus on innovative strategies and interventions that provide the most effective, equitable responses to homelessness at the individual and system levels. The first session, The State of Homelessness in 2024, is taking place on March 14, 2024. Save the date!

Objectives

• Explore practices to respond to the current challenges from the increase in homelessness
• Highlight communities implementing Housing First and decreasing barriers to housing
• Using person-centered practices to examine the threat that criminalization poses to preventing and ending homelessness
• Find innovative ways to create a system that ends homelessness with housing as the focus
• Discover services and supports needed after rehousing, the importance of partnerships outside of the homeless services system, and how to engage in broader housing affordability conversations
• Provide practical, specific steps communities can take to incorporate the values and philosophies essential to a person-centered homelessness response

Audience

This series is intended for front-line staff, program directors, system leaders, and funders.

Schedule and Joining Instructions

Participants do not need to register in advance. It is strongly recommended that you join each webinar 15 minutes prior to the start time (12:45 PM EDT).

Title	Date and Time	Joining Link
The State of Homelessness in 2024	1:00 PM – 2:30 PM EDT	Join the Webinar
Housing First: Still the Right Way to End Homelessness	April 4, 2024 1:00 PM – 2:30 PM EDT	Join the Webinar
Criminalization: An Emerging Threat to Ending Homelessness	May 2, 2024 1:00 PM – 2:30 PM EDT	Save the Date
Housing-Focused Interventions Across the Continuum	June 6, 2024 1:00 PM – 2:30 PM EDT	Save the Date
Staying Housed	July 11, 2024 1:00 PM – 2:30 PM EDT	Save the Date
The Person-Centered CoC	August 8, 2024 1:00 PM – 2:30 PM EDT	Save the Date

Contact

2024 HUD Innovations in Ending Homelessness Roundtable Series Registrar | trainings@hudexchange.info