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United Way and Chatham County unveil public housing dashboard to track services
Summary
Chatham County and United Way presented a new public-facing Chatham Housing Collective dashboard and progress report on a county housing strategic plan, highlighting data collection since Dec. 2024, new staff positions, and plans to use metrics to guide investments and services.
Chatham County officials and United Way of Chatham County on Sept. 15 unveiled a public data dashboard and progress report tied to the county’s housing strategic plan, saying the tool will help providers, funders and residents see where services are working and where gaps remain.
Jason Smith, the county’s housing director, and Daisy Butcher, impact manager at United Way, described the Chatham Housing Collective and a dashboard that aggregates monthly, de‑identified metrics reported by service providers. “We receive aggregate data at United Way each month from service providers so that we can then clean it and provide it in our dashboard for the public to view,” Butcher said. She told commissioners the dashboard launched about 10 days earlier and includes information on supply, rent, mortgage and assistance programs and a resource directory available in English and Spanish.
The presenters said the work aims to coordinate services across nonprofits and county programs and to track outcomes such as positive exits from street outreach since data collection began in December 2024. Smith credited United Way for helping build capacity and said the county created three staff positions in housing and placed a full‑time case manager at Salvation Army Chatham to strengthen service delivery.
Commissioners pressed staff on how the dashboard handles duplicated counts across multiple providers; Butcher said the current approach reports program‑level impact (for example, street outreach or McKinney‑Vento exits) and that a pilot system, the Chatham Success Network, will allow more identifiable, longitudinal tracking with appropriate data security. The board endorsed outreach plans to make the dashboard useful to decision‑makers, partners and residents and encouraged staff to promote it through tax notices, listservs and partner communications.
The county and United Way said the dashboard is intended as a live resource to inform program and budget choices and to measure incremental improvements as investment continues.
