Author: Josiah Lyon, MSW Intern
One of the most crucial jobs we need to do to end homelessness may not be what you expect. Beyond guiding people experiencing homelessness home, supporting them in their needs, and providing them with opportunities, we also need good quality data. Communities receiving U.S. government funding are required to use a Homeless Management Information System (HMIS) as required by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). Our community relies on HMIS in a number of ways, but it only works if everybody makes sure that their data is timely and accurate. Why is it so important for us to have good data? Here are just a few of the ways that data helps us in the fight to end homelessness.
Improve Services
Data helps us identify problems and find solutions so that we can better serve people experiencing homelessness. We use data from HMIS to find helpful insights so that we understand the big picture of what is happening in our community, as well as identify practices that are working (and not working) to improve service delivery.
Make Informed Decisions
Data helps us make important decisions about our programs. Good data helps us know if we are on the right path to ending homelessness. Without data, we simply guess at what helps our clients best or guess when making programmatic decisions. Even worse, bad data may lead us down paths that are inefficient or unhelpful to our clients.
Back Up Our Arguments
In order to make big-picture change, we need data to make our case. Having good quality data allows us to show evidence for programs that work as well as areas of need. To show the true story of homelessness in our community, we need accurate and timely data. This helps us advocate better and more effectively to funders and decision makers.
Secure Funding
Good data helps secure funding for homelessness services in our area. HUD is the biggest funder for homelessness response across the nation. HUD and other funders determine how much, if any, resources we are granted based both on our performance as demonstrated by the data in HMIS. HUD Continuum of Care funding (just under $24 million awarded to WNY in FY2024) is a national competition. Therefore, performance impacts how much funding our region is awarded, which changes how much local organizations can fund staff and programs. In other words, our data directly impacts how much we can do for our neighbors in need.
Where do you come in?
If you are part of an organization that uses HMIS, your data is a key piece to the puzzle. You can be the reason that data makes a difference. Want to help us have good data? Learn more from our HMIS Knowledge Base.