Introducing the Homeless Management Information System

Posted on by Hal L. Millard

Representatives from the Carolina Homeless Information Network (CHIN) will provide an orientation on Monday, March 3 to community members and stakeholders interested in learning about the Homeless Information Management System (HMIS). The orientation will take place at 11 a.m. in the fifth floor conference room in Asheville City Hall.

HMIS is designed as a computerized data collection tool to aggregate client-level information, over time, on characteristics, service needs and service utilization of individuals experiencing homelessness.  This program can be used as a tool to better understand the needs of the homeless population and the response of the homeless service system to those needs.

This management tool is being used by the Asheville-Buncombe Homeless Initiative and Homeless Coalition to evaluate local homeless data for planning and funding purposes.  Nationally, communities that have used HMIS are able to use their data to access new funding for best-practices programs and projects because communities have valid, up-to-date data to show results: people are obtaining and maintaining housing.

In Asheville and Buncombe County, the relatively new HMIS system is steadily being incorporated into agency practice, and as agencies identify personnel, participate in regular trainings, and input data, the Homeless Initiative and CHIN are available to provide support. As more agencies join the network, it will become more important for community members and stakeholders to understand the HMIS program.

The orientation will give an overview of HMIS, provide details about current community use, and offer specific details about who can use the system and how it can be used.

—Hal L. Millard, staff writer

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3 thoughts on “Introducing the Homeless Management Information System”

  1. Alan Ditmore

    The big brother angle bothers me. There are pros and con’s here as I am sure no government has the interests of homeless people at heart, it is not likely that expanded government knowledge will serve the interests of homeless people on a net basis.
    Such a system might have helped the sheriff track Robin Hood.

  2. Scott

    “Homeless Management Information System” – could they find a creepier, more patronizing name? Who wants to be “managed”? A quick read-through of their jargon-laden website strongly suggests that this scheme was cooked up by faceless corporate bureaucrats.

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