System Performance Dashboard

In order to better understand and identify the needs of our system in reducing homelessness, the system performance dashboard helps our community examine our progress in making homelessness rare, brief, and non-recurring. It was developed provide a comprehensive view on three levels:

• Programmatic: Measuring outcomes by an individual programs
• System Level: Measuring outcomes based on client movement through the various interventions provided by the homelessness system
• Population Level: Measuring outcomes by demographics and household types

The five metrics we use to assess how well we are working toward our goal of making homelessness rare, brief and non-recurring are:

1. Permanent Housing: The percent of individuals/households that exit our system to permanent housing. This tells us how well our interventions are supporting someone resolving their homelessness. It answers the question: are we making someone’s experience of homelessness rare?
2. Average Length of Stay: The average amount of time an individual/household experiences homelessness in shelter, transitional housing, or safe haven. This tells us how effective we are at quickly responding to someone’s housing crisis. It answers the question: are we making someone’s experience of homelessness brief?
3. Returns to homelessness: The percent of individuals/households that exited to permanent housing and then returned to homelessness in the last 24 months. It answers the question: are we making someone’s experience of homelessness non-recurring?
4. Homeless entries: The percent of individuals/households that were experiencing homelessness when they entered a program. This tells us how well we are diverting individuals from homelessness. It also answers the question: are we making someone’s experience of homelessness rare?
5. Bed Utilization: The percent of beds that are filled across our homeless service providers. This tells us if we are effectively engaging our community resources. It does not directly align with our goal of ending homelessness, but it does inform us about community need and capacity.

This data is reviewed frequently by the Blueprint council. Ongoing monitoring of performance data by intervention type and individual programs allows both system leaders and agencies to review progress and make adjustments as necessary to improve outcomes for people experiencing homelessness.

For questions about this dashboard, please email Danielle Bagg Wireman. 

Update frequency: The 7th of every month
Data Source: HMIS

Key Takeaways:

• Overall, the system is scaling in the total numbers of clients experiencing homelessness over the previous year, but the rate in which people were permanently housed also rose in tandem.
• Total length of time clients spend in emergency shelter, transitional housing and safe havens has been steadily increasing over the past year and a half. Our CoC leadership will be working to develop plans to ensure that clients homeless experiences are brief and rare.

​How to use the dashboard:
This dashboard contains a lot of information! Hover your mouse over the data points to see information pop-ups and learn more. You can also view the dashboard using different filters that will impact what information is highlighted in the dashboard’s presentation.