HUD and its federal partners agreed to establish the 2017 Point-in-Time (PIT) count as the baseline year for measuring youth experiencing homelessness. To assist communities in having the best count possible, HUD has published some resources to aid communities in identifying youth.
Crosswalk of Key Federally-funded Child and Youth Homeless Contacts contains a crosswalk of Continuum of Care (CoC) primary contacts, Homeless Liaison (LEA) contact information for schools, and Runaway and Homeless Youth (RHY) providers. The goal of this document is to make it easier for stakeholders that serve children and youth experiencing homelessness that receive federal funding to know how to contact each other. HUD and its federal partners know that this document will have errors – both in actual contact information as well as in the crosswalk because contact information changes regularly and agencies record the physical locations and jurisdictional boundaries of their programs in different ways. However, those errors are likely to be limited and we will strive to improve this document in the future to minimize issues. If your community currently does not have all three of above stakeholders at the table, where applicable, we strongly encourage you to use this document to reach out to those contacts and come together to prevent and end homelessness among children and youth. We also encourage you to reach out to other youth-serving programs which are not included in the spreadsheet, including shelters and drop-in centers, child welfare agencies, juvenile justice agencies, affordable housing developers, afterschool programs, behavioral health organizations, and others.
In addition, HUD strongly encourages communities to review the many resources being published to better count youth experiencing homelessness. They come from federal partners (e.g., the U.S. Department of Education, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness), advocacy organizations (e.g., the True Colors Fund, National Network for Youth), research entities (e.g., Chapin Hall), and communities. These resources are based on a variety of perspectives and offer unique insights to identifying youth experiencing homelessness in PIT counts. While these resources provide helpful ideas CoCs bear the responsibility to ensure whatever they adopt complies with HUD’s requirements (see Notice CPD-16-060: 2017 HIC and PIT Data Collection for CoC and ESG Programs and Point-in-Time Count Methodology Guide). |
