The Homeless Chronicles. Part 14

This is Part 14 in a multi-part series about Homelessness in California, and more specifically in Orange County. Here’s links to the previous articles –

• Who Are The Homeless.
• How Many Homeless Are There?
• What Are the Real Numbers?
• What Percent are Homeless?
• Which Cities Have the Most Homeless?
• Summary 1 to 5
• What Percent is Mentally Ill?
• Who Are the Homeless Mentally Ill?
• The Increase in Homeless Mentally Ill
• Why Does Orange County Have the Highest Increase in the State?
• Summary 1to 10
• How Accurate is the Data?
• The County is Missing Vital Data

Today we start a 4-part series mini-about what’s happening in Orange County according to the County’s Homeless Management Information System or HMIS. Almost all counties have a similar website as part of the federal government’s desire to collect data about this nationwide problem.

The County’s website will be a little hard to understand for most people. It’s simply a collection of 8 separate reports with little if any attempt to provide any summary, synthesis or even remote association of one report with another.

GLOBAL VIEW

Looking at the Statistics report we can get a global view. As of November 2019 the County reports

• There are 11,675 “unduplicated active clients” in the system.
• The system gets input from 49 “participating agencies” as follows -
  • 43 “transitional housing” agencies
  • 39 “Permanent Supportive Housing (disability required)” agencies
  • 37 Emergency Shelter agencies
  • 35 Rapid Re-Housing agencies
  • 21 Street Outreach agencies
  • 19 Homeless Prevention agencies
• There are 10 “active clients by project type”
  • Emergency Shelter – 3,462 clients
  • Permanent Supportive Housing – 2,536 clients
  • Housing Services Only – 2,501 clients
  • Street Outreach – 1,409 clients
  • Coordinated Entry – 959 clients
  • Rapid Re-Housing – 787 clients
  • Transitional Housing – 521 clients
  • Homeless Prevention – 509 clients

In this report the County does not provide any narrative, however, we know from other reports that generally speaking Street Outreach and Emergency Shelter are considered “unsheltered” services while the other projects are considered “sheltered”. Looked at from that perspective –

• 4,871 active unsheltered clients (42%)
• 6,804 active sheltered clients (58%)

QUALITY OF DATA

Not Up-to-Date

Unfortunately the Statistics section is the only one of the 8 reports that is up-to-date. Here is the most recent date for the rest of the reports –

• Longitudinal System Analysis – 12/31/17
• HUD System Performance – 12/31/18
• Housing Inventory Count – 3/31/19
• CoC Board Reports – 5/30/19
• Data Quality Report Cards – 9/30/19

The Project Performance Report consists of 6 separate reports as follows –

• Transitional Housing – 4/30/19
• Homeless Prevention – 6/30/19
• Permanent Supportive Housing – 7/31/19
• Emergency Shelter – 8/31/19
• Rapid Re-Housing – 9/30/19
• Street Outreach – 10/31/19

For some unknown reason, project reports for Coordinated Entry, Services Only, and Other are not listed. Housing Only is combined with Permanent Supportive Housing.

Not Complete

The County also keeps track of what they call “completeness” of the data in the HMIS Data Quality Report Card. They define “completeness” as “the degree to which all required data is known, valid and documented in HMIS.” As of 9/30/19 the figures range from TBD (Coordinated Entry) to 50% (Services Only - Program Specific Data Elements-Exit), 65% (Emergency Shelter-Program Specific Data Elements-Exit) and 98% (Transitional Housing – Universal Data Elements). Note that across 9 projects with 3 measures of completeness for each project, there is no 100% score, although scores of 90% or higher are present for 78% of the cases.

Timeliness?

At the bottom of the page they list “Data Timeliness” but no data is offered.

The data on the County’s website as of mid-December 2019 is not up-to-date, and in a number of instances, years behind. Completeness is pretty good, but certainly not up to the private sector level. Timeliness is mentioned but no data provided.

Summary

• The County has contact with nearly 12,000 homeless clients from 49 different agencies.
• 42% of the clients are classified as unsheltered and the largest single client group is from the Emergency Shelter project with 3,462 clients.
• Very few reports are up-to-date, some are years behind, and some are simply missing or TBD (to be determined).
• None of the projects have complete data, though for 78% of the projects’ data completeness is more than 90%. Timeliness of the data has yet to be measured/reported.

Next time we’ll look at the current status of the homeless in Orange County.

About the Author

Dr. Jim Gardner is the former Mayor of Lake Forest. A Clinical Psychologist, he is a former University Professor and Department Head. He authored several reports about homelessness.