Rationale
The Prior Living Situation is used to:
- Identify the type of living situation just prior to project start, and
- Identify the length of stay in that situation just prior to project start for all adults and head of households.
This data element is used with other information to identify whether a client meets the criteria for chronic homelessness at various points of enrollment (i.e. at the point of project entry, at a point during a project enrollment, or at any point over the course of a specified reporting period).
The element has been constructed to avoid collecting information that is irrelevant or inappropriate for client populations being served in particular situations. For example, eligibility for Homelessness Prevention requires that a client is in housing. By definition, a person in housing is not chronically homeless at that point in time, so some of the fields in this data element used to determine chronic homeless status are not required in that situation.
Data Entry Instructions
The responses are intended to reflect the client's last living situation immediately prior to the Project Start Date. For projects that do not provide lodging, the 'prior' living situation may be the same as the client's current living situation. Answer all questions as accurately as possible. For a complete list of the Prior Living Situation (Type of Residence) options, please see Appendix A of the HUD HMIS Data Standards Manual.
Intake staff should ask clients about their homeless history, including specific instances the client spent on the street, in an Emergency Shelter, or in a Safe Haven project. This may require defining or explaining each field to the client.
- Type of Residence: Choose the option that most closely resembles where the client stayed last night.
- Length of Stay in Prior Living Situation: The amount of time the client has been living in the type of residence chosen for 'Type of Residence.'
- Approximate date Homelessness Started: The actual or approximate date this homeless situation started (or the beginning of the continuous period of homelessness on the streets, in emergency shelters, in safe havens, or moving back and forth between those places for the client).
- If a client had housing for more than 7 consecutive days (or was in an institution such as a hospital or jail for more than 90 days) this would be considered a break in homelessness. The approximate date homelessness started should be after, not inclusive, of a break.
- Number of times on the streets, in ES, or Safe Haven in the past 3 years: Regardless of where the client stayed last night, indicate the number of times the client has been homeless in the past three years.
- Total number of months homeless on the streets, in ES, or Safe Haven in the past three years: The total number of months the client has experienced homelessness in the past three years including the day of the enrollment.
If enrolling the client into a housing, day shelter, services only, or coordinated entry project AND the 'Type of Residence' does not indicate homelessness (e.g. is not emergency shelter, street outreach, or safe haven) a different set of questions will also show to identify if the client meets HUDs definition of homelessness.
- If the client's 'Type of Residence' indicates a potentially temporary or permanent type of residence (i.e. staying with friends or family) and the length of stay in that situation is more than 7 nights no additional information will be requested. The client does not meet HUD's definition of homelessness.
- If the client's length of stay in a temporary or permanent type of residence is less than 7 nights, the system will continue with the additional prior living situation questions. This information is used to determine if the client meets the criteria for chronic homelessness.
- If the client's 'Type of Residence' indicates a stay in an institution (i.e. hospital or jail) and the length of stay in that situation is more than 90 nights, no additional information will be requested. The client does not meet HUD's definition of homelessness.
- If the client's length of stay in an institution is less than 90 nights, the system will continue with the additional prior living situation questions. This information is used to determine if the client meets the criteria for chronic homelessness.
Although documentation is required by some funders for programs targeting chronic homeless persons, completing the data fields in HMIS does not require documentation -- a client's responses are all that is required. Different project types have different realities they are working in when it comes to interviewing clients. Some high-volume shelters may simply ask people to quickly “ballpark” their responses to the required fields. Other project types are able to have more complex intake processes that allow staff to sit with the client and get a clearer picture of the client's housing history and their official “breaks” in homelessness, according to the definition of chronic homelessness.
PSH projects with documentation requirements are expected to spend time with clients' HMIS records and files to gather information for documentation purposes, which they can use to improve data quality in this field. All of these strategies are acceptable, and HUD anticipates that the data quality will vary from project type to project type. This data element is intended to provide a consistent way to capture information about individuals who are likely experiencing chronic homelessness in the HMIS for HUD and CoCs to use for planning purposes.
Note that this data element does not constitute third-party documentation of chronic homelessness for projects that require such documentation as it is self-reported (HMIS reports of actual enrollments in ES, SH, or SO projects may be used to meet third-party documentation requirements).
More Resources
For more detailed and the most up-to-date information regarding HUD required HMIS Program Data Elements, please find the Data Standards Manual here: HMIS Data Standards - HUD Exchange.
Contact Us
If you need help, or wish to offer suggestions or feedback, please contact the Cincinnati/Hamilton County HMIS support team at HMISsupport@end-homelessness.org or by calling 513-263-2790 9:00am - 3:00pm Monday-Friday (excluding holidays).
When contacting HMIS Support, please do not include any Personal Identifiable Information (PII) such as names, social security numbers, birth dates, etc. Please only use the Clarity Unique Identifier found on the Clarity client profile page.