What is the Homeless Management Information System (HMIS) and how is helping?
The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) was directed by Congress to work with jurisdictions to gather homeless data by 2004. In February 2007, the US Department of Housing and Urban Development released their Annual Homeless Assessment Report to Congress. This report utilized data gathered from HMIS as well as from Continuum of Care networks to give a picture of the number of homeless living in America. You can view the report here.
The National Alliance to End Homelessness presents the following key reasons for using HMIS in efforts to address homelessness:
Giving continuous and accurate information on people that are served by homeless assistance programs, including:
- whether the numbers are going up or going down,
- whether the programs are working, and
- whether the current approach to the problem is appropriately designed.
Providing documentation that can be used to hold mainstream social welfare systems more accountable in preventing homelessness and working more effectively.
- Most if not all clients in the homeless assistance system are also clients in other mainstream social welfare systems -- public safety system (probation/parole), child welfare system, TANF, mental health systems, substance abuse treatment systems, etc. -- and the reason they are homeless is in part because they are not being adequately served by these systems.
Through HMIS, the homeless assistance system can measure the number of clients it is serving and where these clients are coming from and take that information back to the mainstream systems and hold them more accountable for the populations they are serving and for doing the job they are supposed to do.
- Also, once people are in the homeless assistance system they often have an impact on other systems. Because they don't have housing, they may end up being arrested more often, they may end up being hospitalized more often, they may end up losing their children to the child welfare system, etc.
By showing the mainstream systems data that demonstrates the negative impact these clients are having on those systems, the homeless assistance system can get the attention of these systems, which have a larger share of resources. With HMIS data, the people who lead and fund these systems can be shown how their dollars are already disproportionately being spent on this population, and that through better policy and better programming their dollars can be used much more effectively to reduce the length of time people are homeless and to reduce the negative impact on their systems.