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about HUD's HMIS program

What is HMIS?

The US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) grants about $1.2 billion annually in homelessness-related funds. Starting in 2004, HUD has required recipients of these funds to collect electronic data on their homeless clients. HUD calls such a data collection system "HMIS" (for "Homelessness Management Information System"). It collects demographic information on homeless people served, as well as the exact dates that they enter and exit service programs. HUD is quite specific about the data that it wants collected for HMIS and the form in which this data should appear. The latest details for HMIS are published in HUD's July 2004 “Data and Technical Standards Final Notice.” Communities may choose any product they wish to collect this data: it can be commercial software, locally-developed software, or virtually anything else.


Do we have to collect HMIS data?

If your community receives HUD homelessness funding, then it almost certainly needs to collect data on homeless clients and their housing stays, following HMIS guidelines. HUD has been very clear that grantees should expect their future funding levels to be linked to their compliance with HMIS requirements.


Do we have to give our HMIS data to anybody?

That’s the odd part of the equation. At the moment, the data simply stays with your community. HUD has defined an annual HMIS report (called the AHAR), which gives aggregate information on clients and services. (HUD has always insisted that it does not want to receive information about individual clients.) However, at the time of this writing (early 2007), there’s no requirement for any community to submit the AHAR (or any other HMIS report) to HUD.

In 2004, HUD chose some 80 communities (mostly Continuums of Care) to be “sample pilot sites” for the AHAR. Yet only a fraction of these sample communities actually submit complete AHARs to HUD. You should also note that the AHAR uses only a small fraction of the data required for HMIS. So, although HUD grantees must collect a great deal of HMIS data, for now (and the foreseeable future) only a small fraction of grantees are asked to report on only a small fraction of that data.


Whose data goes into the HMIS?

Communities use HMIS to collect data from clients who are served by HUD homelessness funds. Clients who choose not to participate in HMIS must not be refused service for that reason. Communities may also enter data from other homeless clients in their community (that is, those not funded by HUD), but this is not required.


Do we need to use HMIS for anything besides reporting?

No. Grantees only need to collect client information into a central database and, when required, to compile it into aggregate reports.

Still, many people are excited about the idea of using HMIS as a case management tool. In this approach, client information stored in a central database may be shared among many different agencies throughout the community who are working with the same clients.

Be aware that such community-wide case management demands a much higher level of organization, security, technical support, and technology expenditure than reporting alone. This means a significantly larger budget, both for start-up and for ongoing support.


How do we protect client confidentiality?

When providers collect data for HMIS, they must post notices explaining to clients a) how their data is being used, and b) that the data is securely protected from unauthorized release. Clients do not need to sign a consent form before their data is used for HMIS.

Some of the technical aspects of data security are covered in the HUD “Final Standards” notice. In an earlier draft (2003), HUD required HMIS data to be stored in encrypted format. In the final version, this requirement was removed. However, some products (including Sparrow) do encrypt data to help ensure security.

Confidentiality can be complicated by the fact that clients' health-related data (including mental health, substance abuse, etc.) may be protected by tough Federal HIPAA regulations.

Clients are free to decline participation in HMIS. If they decline, they may not be barred from services for this reason.

The Violence Against Women Act of 2006 (VAWA) prohibits domestic violence service providers from releasing personally identifying data about their clients for HMIS purposes. To comply with VAWA, many communities simply exclude domestic violence clients from their HMIS system. However, it’s possible to include HMIS data from domestic violence programs if personally-identifying information is stripped out. This can be done, but it does require extra planning and care.


What technologies will we need to meet the HMIS mandate?

HMIS requires a community-wide system of collecting, sharing, and analyzing client data. One of the first technology decisions for each community is how to get client data from individual service providers into the HMIS database.
  • Web-based: Some communities purchase commercial web-based software (such as ServicePoint or MetSys), which lets service providers enter the data over the web.
  • Stand-alone: In other communities, service providers simply collect the data using paper forms. These forms are handed in to a central location, to be entered to a stand-alone database by data entry staff.
Neither of these approaches is “correct.” Each has its advantages and disadvantages.
  • The web-based approach to data entry is an excellent choice for communities that plan to share case management information between providers. However, a web system requires hardware and technical support that can become quite expensive. Computers, software and data lines for providers must also be budgeted in. Since every provider enters data directly to the HMIS system, there’s not much room for error: every user must have full and extensive training. This is a crucial ongoing expense. Without it, even the best web-based system can be overwhelmed with meaningless data.
  • The stand-alone approach is a good solution for small to medium communities (under perhaps 15,000 homeless clients per year) which are setting up HMIS primarily to meet HUD’s requirements. This approach offers low cost and simplicity. Service providers are already familiar with paper forms, so training can be much easier. There are no hardware costs (other than a single computer to stores and analyze the data). It's easy to achieve a high standard of security, since there's no use of public data networks. However, such data is not easily shared between providers, so it’s not a good solution for community-wide integrated case management.
Quicksilver provides a complete stand-alone HMIS database (with forms and planning guides) which is free for nonprofit use. For more information, please see the description of the Sparrow database system.


Additional HMIS resources

have you heard...?

February 2007: Quicksilver releases Sparrow 3.12, a free HMIS (Homeless Management Information System) database application
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El Cerrito, CA 94530-2224