Data Sources for Performance Metrics

Summary:  All data has been sourced from one or more of the following publicly available resources:

• King County Regional Homelessness Authority website
  • Monthly Households Served
  • System Performance – utilization
  • Regional Homelessness Data – Bed Inventory (tab: “What resources exist?”)
  • Point-in-Time Count – various data points (including: % Chronic Homeless, % sheltered, % by sub-region)
• Individual Provider websites
  • “Property listing” pages containing individual property “Unit” or “Bed” counts, and classification of housing / shelter type
• HUD annual CHMA report (Seattle/Bellevue/Everett market analysis)
  • Annual Occupancy Rate for Apartment Units in King County (p.22)
  • Annual Occupancy Rate for Hotel / Motel Units (for any market)
  • Projected 3 year population growth % (p. 11)
• HUD annual Housing Inventory Count (HIC) report
  • Operational Inventory – # of Beds and # of Units
• “In the Pipeline” – New Shelter or Housing in “Pre-development” or “Construction”
  • Various City and County Government websites
  • Media coverage of new projects
    • (this data is cross-validated to at least 1 additional source, when possible)

Notes About the Data

All data utilized in architecting this Dashboard and its Metrics is based on a “Best Available Public Data” approach.

Please note the following current limitations:

1. Not all data is made publicly available (e.g. King County currently does not publish the monthly HMIS Chronic Homeless data point. Thus, this dashboard currently uses a proxy data point derived from other publicly available data. )
2. For data that IS available to the public, most of it is not reported in “real time” (i.e. previous month’s history/activity is available in the following month). Most data points have a minimum of 3 month lag-time, and some data points are only made refreshed on an annual basis
3. There are several anomalies across the data as reported on the King County Regional Homeless Authority website. (e.g. monthly Households Served total does not add up from the individual #’s for each category – Sheltered, Unsheltered, Uknown)

At whatever point “better data” is made publicly available and would further improve the metrics of this Dashboard, it will be considered for integration within the Dashboard.

Overview

“Data represents people”

Whenever we speak about a problem in terms of numbers, data and metrics – it’s easy to lose sight of the fact that ultimately – the data, metrics and Dashboards represent real people, each with a uniquely individual, personal life and story.

However…

in order to effectively manage our collective actions toward achieving a desired outcome that helps individuals (in this case – eliminating homelessness) – it still requires a solid foundation of understanding the extent, scope and magnitude of the aggregate picture, which can only come through data and metrics.

Thus, as you view this dashboard’s data and metrics, I would ask that you challenge your conventional assumptions, by considering and then *re-considering* the following questions:

1. What problem(s) are you *actually* trying to solve? (besides the ‘catch-all’ answer of ‘ending homelessness’)
2. To what levels of performance (targets) can we realistically achieve?
3. Are there specific new insights needed in order to address the problem(s) more effectively or innovatively?

And as you consider these questions, keep in mind that most of the data and metrics on this dashboard already exists somewhere.  What I’ve done is simply re-configure and present existing data in a format that reframes the metrics in a way that they can be actively used to effectively achieve desired end results.

And whatever results we achieve – good or bad – the “Data (always) represents people”