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City staff presents homelessness data and warns about limits and differing definitions
Summary
Staff gave a data briefing that organized information into five domains and stressed that point‑in‑time counts, service encounters and various administrative datasets use different definitions and scopes; the committee asked for follow‑up HMIS inflow/outflow data and an ecosystem map of services.
City staff presented a summary memo compiling available city, county and state sources and cautioned the committee that homelessness data are not uniform: different measures cover different geographies, encounter types and definitions, so numbers must be interpreted in context. Staff said the point‑in‑time count, service utilization measures and school definitions capture distinct concepts and that the city's continuum of care hub covers three counties so some figures are not city‑only.
Members requested more specific inflow/outflow statistics from the HMIS dataset and asked staff to prepare an ecosystem map (a visual service map showing agency responsibilities and referral pathways) for a future meeting so the committee can identify gaps, overlaps and data needs. "Not every data point is measuring the same thing as the data point next to it," staff warned when explaining differences between counts and service encounters.
