Homeless Coalition of the Gulf Coast - Division of Housing First, Inc.

I looked down the road and saw an animal. As I got closer, I saw that it was a human. As I got close, I realized that it was my brother.

"None But The Lonely Heart"

1944

The History of Homeless Management Information System (HMIS)

In 2001, Congress asked the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) to require communities to develop an unduplicated count of the homeless. Congress required this for two reasons. Cities with good data systems (Columbus, New York City and Philadelphia) did a better job of addressing the problem of homelessness. Also, a reliable and comprehensive homeless data set was required and needed to effectively allocate federal money.

HUD needed communities to collect accurate data on homelessness in order to evaluate the effectiveness of local homeless programs. With this accurate data, Congress could appropriately assess progress toward the initiative to solve the chronic homeless problem by 2012.

To meet this goal, HUD required federally funded public and nonprofit organizations to implement a homeless tracking system. Out of this directive came the Homeless Management Information System (HMIS). Homeless Management Information System (HMIS), a computerized data collection application and storage system. HMIS facilitates the collection of information on homeless individuals and families using residential or other homeless assistance service agencies. It also has the capacity to integrate data from all homeless service providers across the state. This state data can then be aggregated nationally in order to establish effective Federal policies to address homelessness.

Since 2001 many Continua of Care for the Homeless developed their HMIS systems and concluded that it is very helpful to have all Human Service Providers to participate in this database, since better provisions for preventing homelessness can be put into place.

The Homeless Coalition of the Gulf Coast has been assigned as a designated agency to implement the local HMIS. In 2004 The Homeless Coalition of the Gulf Coast received its first HMIS HUD grant for the project, and contracted City of Mobile’s MIS department to implement promisAL (Program Management Information System, Alabama).

The Present state of our HMIS, PromisAL

In April of 2007, the Mobile and Baldwin County CoC for the homeless voted to join the state-wide system, now known as PromisAL, which to this date includes 7 of 8 Continua of Care in the state of Alabama. It is our understanding that Montgomery CoC is planning to join this system in 2008, which would make the database truly Alabama state-wide.

The state-wide System has a contract with Bowman Systems and utilizes their web-based database ServicePoint. This specific software was developed for HMIS purpose and meets all HUD’s rules and regulations. It is also targeted to assist all human service providers to collect information of all their clients, track the services provided to clients and to document outcomes of those services.

The information on all participating clients is stored in one centralized location. There is possibility of sharing all or partial information among all participating agencies across Mobile and Baldwin Counties and across the state. The level of sharing Information depends on agency policies, sensitivity of information and client’s consent. There is a possibility of sharing information only with specific agencies, specific projects, or none at all. The benefits of sharing of information are many, including elimination of multiple data entries by several agencies that service the same clients, better understanding of clients needs, organized case management, and prevention of service abuse by decreasing duplication of services.