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Below are just some of the reasons why your community needs a HMIS data warehouse to support a culture of data-driven decision making…

  • Dashboards! A warehouse can be used to automate the creation of public-facing dashboards and research tools.  This helps communities in the move towards data-driven decision making, support discussions on addressing racial disparities, and provide key details on which projects are delivering on the outcomes needed helping to improve the performance of the system.
  • Performance Evaluation and Monitoring Tools. By leveraging a common framework to evaluate the performance of projects, regional leaders can maximize the impact of each dollar coming into the community.  These tools were originally designed to support the annual Notice of Funding Availability (NOFA) Rating and Ranking process however regions are now using them year-round to provide that continuous feedback loop.
  • Better HUD Reporting.com can not only produce all HUD required reports but users can also run reports by target population, across projects, and by region! Need to support a meeting on chronically homeless veterans? Simply run a report over the entire region for that group and click on the report figure to view the list of clients.
  • Street Outreach. HomelessData can integrate traditional HMIS data with street outreach data gathered by mobile apps such as Show the Way. This is important as HMIS is traditionally PC-based yet the work of street outreach programs is more conducive to mobile tech. We need both shelter and outreach data to help paint the full picture.
  • Prioritized By-Name Lists.  The data is gathered to build a “longitudinal record” of each person’s history in the homeless system.  This can be used to document chronic homeless status, drive housing prioritization for coordinated entry, and help inform case management. Do you have an upcoming vacancy on a HUD-funded PSH unit? To meet the requirements within the HUD Prioritization Notice simply filter the list to show just those who are chronically homeless and sort it by length of homelessness.
  • Data Quality Monitoring & Scrubbing Tools. Built in data quality monitoring helps ensure the integrity of the results being shared. These same tools can be used to support an effective conversion between HMIS systems.
  • Ability to Integrate Non-HMIS data. US Census data can be used to inform if there are racial disparities between the general population and the homeless population, data syncs with the Veteran Affairs (the VA) can verify veteran status without requiring a DD-214, and integrations with data from medical providers can help demonstrate the return on investment of housing. If you have local data, we can work with you to get it integrated.
  • Geospatial Reporting.  Quite often there is a need to run a report by city or town to meet local needs, or to be able to look at data by census tract to support racial disparity analysis.  The warehouse supports this level of analysis whereas most HMIS software does not.
  • Cross-Region Reporting. HUD is encouraging CoCs to merge, implying that one of the CoCs may need to sever their contract with their current HMIS vendor and go through the pain of a system conversion.  With a warehouse, this is not needed as the data from each CoC can be aggregated and regional reports can be run off the combined data set.
  • Research Request Support. The public-facing dashboards should accommodate most research requests however there may be others that require access to identifiable or de-identified data. The warehouse has built in controls to support the controlled access to data to ensure researchers are provided just what is needed.

Each of these reasons also come with the peace of mind that the warehouse is going to be available and secure, the logic is accurate, and that we are here to help if you have any questions. Amazon Web Services helps ensure the stability and security of HomelessData.com. The business logic is industry-proven with over 3900 projects that serve the homeless having used the warehouse. The experienced team at Simtech Solutions stand behind the work are available through the virtual help desk if there are any questions.

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