# Presentation: 306123

## Conducting Homeless Point-in-time Surveys

- Tracy D’Alanno
- Colorado Department of Human Services
- Supportive Housing and Homeless Programs
- Phone: 303-866-7361
- E-mail: tracy.dalanno@state.co.us

**A 10-Step Process**

## Homeless Point-in-time Survey:Why Do It?

- HUD requires sheltered and unsheltered census counts in their annual Continuum of Care application
- A point-in-time survey may be used to produce an estimate of the “point prevalence” of homelessness in a community or region either in conjunction with, or when there is not an active HMIS
- Point prevalence is the number of cases observed at a particular point in time or the number of homeless persons on a given day or night

## Benefits

- May be used for estimating population size, distinguishing demographics, and identifying needs
- Provides useful information for public education about homelessness
- Helps agencies with grant applications
- Helps direct public policy planning and development
- Provides information to communities for service planning
- Helps HUD Consolidated Planning Jurisdictions with completing their plans
- Provides the information needed to complete Exhibit 1 of the Continuum of Care application

## Limitations

- Undercounting is the primary limitation of this method. Counting persons who are homeless is not an exact science. Limiting the methodology to a specific point in time makes it difficult to capture all potential cases.
- It requires a lot of coordination with participating agencies.
- A lack of full participation from all homeless providing agencies could lead to a significant undercount and bad data.

## Step 1: Who and Where

- Determine Whom You Want to Count
- Single individuals
- Families
- Youth on their own
- Veterans
- Sheltered
- Unsheltered
- Chronically homeless
- “Where” – Continuum of Care jurisdiction, multiple CoCs, statewide?

## Step 2: When

- Pick a Date
- Recommend last week of January 2005
- Posted in HUD 2005 Exhibit 1
- Publicize the date frequently to homeless providers
- Backup timeline activities – survey development (English and Spanish), copying, distribution, training, volunteer coordinators

## Step 3: How

- Determine “How” You Want to Count
- Self-reported surveys
- Interviews
- Combination interview and self-reported
- Street outreach
- Survey Distribution – all shelters, day shelters, soup kitchens, transitional housing programs, county social services, jails, prisons, hotels/motels, shelter help lines

## Steps 4: What

- Determine What You Want to Know
- How many persons
- Type of population – singles, families, veterans, special needs, youth, seniors, chronic homelessness
- Important demographics – age, gender, race, ethnicity
- Important special need indicators – mental illness, substance abuse, HIV/AIDS
- Last permanent address

## Steps 4: What

- Determine What You Want to Know
- Where persons are staying – shelter, streets, transitional housing
- Length/frequency
- Reasons for homelessness
- Education
- Income
- Employment status

## Step 5: Survey Instrument

- Make it as short as possible
- Use checkboxes as much as possible
- Code instrument for easier data entry
- Use of identifiers for deduplication – parts of name, date of birth, gender, age, and potentially Social Security number
- See handout instrument

## Step 5: Survey Instrument

- Homeless qualifier
- Are you homeless?
- Do you have a permanent place to live? If yes, match with where they spent last night
- Spanish version?
- Provider buy-in through participation
- Form a committee to oversee process
- Point persons for multiple jurisdictions
- Develop data entry rules – what to do with missing responses, why this question, etc.

## Step 6: Get Help

- Who is taking a lead on organizing the project?  Committees are great, but you need someone to bring it all together
- Research and data entry assistance – university, outside contractor, researcher, State or local government, some combination?
- Homeless persons – usually the best at street outreach
- Volunteers for each organization
- Funding incentives – candy bars, soda, cash
- Provider participation

## Step 7: Training

- One week prior to count
- Hold trainings for participating agencies
- Large group
- At each agency
- Teleconference
- Regional
- Distribute forms

## Step 8: Count Day

- Participating agencies collect surveys during the day and evening of the point in time
- Transitional housing providers may want to complete survey information on behalf of their consumers over the course of that week
- Be prepared for press calls – use these to your advantage
- Set up process for collecting completed forms

## Step 9: Data Entry and CleaningWhere the Real Work Begins

- Clean paper forms and code
- Spot check during data entry – look for errors,  check every 10th record, etc.
- Someone needs to be available to data entry clerks to answer questions

## Step 10: Data Analysis and Findings

- Analyze Data
- Inhouse – large jurisdictions use something like SPSS; smaller jurisdictions probably could use ACCESS or Excel
- Consultants
- Universities
- Government agencies
- Distribute Findings
- All participating agencies should get a copy of the findings

## Distribution and Use of Data

- Release results through press conference
- Consolidated plan jurisdictions
- Continuum of Care and grant applications
- Researchers
- Schools, colleges, and universities
- Special queries
- Trend analysis
- Policy development – local, State, national

## How Many People Were Homeless on January 27, 2003

**Total Persons Counted and Surveyed**

- Data Example:

## Persons Counted as Homeless, 1998–2003

- Data Example:

## What Are the Age Breakdowns for Homeless Populations? 

- Data Example:

## Data Example:

- 16.0%

- 16.5%

- 16.0%

- 14.3%

- 17.1%

- 75 +

- 65 - 75

- 51 - 64

- 41 - 50

- 31 - 40

- 21 - 30

- 18 - 20

- 15 - 17

- 6 - 14

- 0 - 5

## Individual Age Breakdown 

- Data Example: