Driving Change Using Data

Anyone can become homeless through no fault of their own and for a myriad of reasons; therefore, no one solution fits all. We need to know who is homeless in our community and why. Coming Home is the County’s clearinghouse for homelessness data. We administer the County’s Homeless Management Information System (HMIS), whereby we facilitate the coordinated provision of services to those seeking them among all homeless service providers in the County and provide needed analysis of our collective work.

Coming Home conducts an analysis of the Point-in-Time (PIT) data gathered annually and develops an action plan in response to such analysis. We also lead our community’s participation in the Built for Zero Initiative of Community Solutions, a national organization, helping communities end homelessness. This endeavor helps us fine tune our data measurements and define discrete goals and performance measures. Collectively, we look at our data, plan and implement an intervention, study its effectiveness in the short term and either continue, tweak or scrap the effort based on objective data and move on with the process.

Coming Home also obtains data through the operation of our coordinated assessment system. We collect data to understand all of a person’s barriers to stable housing and to regularly measure the success of initiatives designed to address those barriers.  We use the data for targeted investment in the development of needed programs and the creation of affordable housing to meet the identified need.