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HUD continues to see communities evaluating their PIT count efforts to determine how to improve the accuracy. Last year there was a big emphasis on identifying youth and we are confident that the efforts – both the planning and the counting – are key to informing each community’s efforts to end youth homelessness. HUD’s desire is for communities to concentrate more on getting the best counts as possible. Consistent with that, HUD has made minimal changes this year – most of them are associated with changes in the Homeless Management Information Systems (HMIS) data standards.
HIC Changes
- HUD published its 2017 HMIS Data Standards in April 2017, outlining changes to HMIS data collection. While communities are not required to use HMIS to generate their HIC, HUD updated the data standards to include the data elements associated with the HIC so that communities can generate most of the data for the HIC directly from their HMIS, if desired.
- The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) recently designated components within its Grant and Per Diem (GPD) program. The 2017 HMIS Data standards were updated to reflect these changes. Beginning in 2017, communities must report their GPD projects by component type and project type in the HIC.
- The 2017 Data Standards funding sources were updated to include VA-funded Contract Residential Services (CRS), which is a consolidation of the former Health Care for Homeless Veterans (HCHV) Emergency Housing and Residential Treatment Programs. This Notice has been updated to reflect that change.
PIT Count Changes
- Consistent with the updated 2017 HMIS Data Dictionary, HUD changed the “Don’t identify as male, female, or transgender” gender response option to “Gender Non-Conforming (i.e. not exclusively male or female).”
- HUD is requiring that data reported on survivors of domestic violence should be limited to reporting on those who are currently experiencing homelessness because they are fleeing domestic violence, dating violence, sexual assault, or stalking, as opposed to reporting on survivors who have ever experienced these circumstances.
- CoCs are now required to report the number of children of parenting youth families where the parent is under 18 separate from the children of parenting youth families where the parent is aged 18 to 24.
Additional HIC and PIT Resources
- PIT and HIC Guides, Tools, and Webinars Page: This is a one-stop site where communities can access all of HUD’s guidance on how to plan and implement their PIT counts. The resources include the annual notice, the PIT Count Methodology Guide, survey tool resources, implementation resources, etc.
- Preparing for Your 2018 Housing Inventory and Point-in-Time Counts Webinar: HUD will provide a webinar in the fall that will highlight new requirements and data collection guidance for the 2018 HIC and PIT counts and allow communities to ask questions. HUD will send a listserv with registration information prior to the webinar.
Questions about the HIC or PIT?
If you have questions about entering HIC or PIT count data that are not covered in this Notice, please submit them to the HDX Ask A Question (AAQ) portal on the HUD Exchange website. To submit a question to the HDX AAQ portal, select “HDX: Homelessness Data Exchange” from the “My question is related to” drop down list on Step 2 of the question submission process. |
