What do I need to know about mandated federal projects?

The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) requires that all homeless service agencies in the country participate annually in a series of projects. These projects seek to leverage the data collected by agencies to increase our understanding of who is experiencing homelessness in the United States and what interventions are most effective at ensuring instances of homelessness are rare, brief, and non-recurring.

There are four annual HUD projects:

Point-in-Time Count (PIT). The PIT is a count of the total number of unsheltered persons experiencing homelessness on a single night. Across the country, service providers and volunteers team up to interview and count those who are staying in transitional housing, emergency shelters, and places not meant for human habitation. Manually-collected data is combined with the information stored in HMIS to generate the final tally.
Housing Inventory Count (HIC). A companion to the PIT, the HIC is a count of the total number of persons on a single night that are sheltered in homeless-dedicated housing. The HIC also gathers information from transitional housing and emergency shelter projects to determine the total number of beds available for persons experiencing homelessness. To achieve the most accurate accounting, data from agencies participating in HMIS is joined with that from non-participating entities.
System Performance Measures (SPMs). Fed by HMIS data, SPMs are a nationwide monitoring and evaluation process designed to...
1. Help Continuum of Care (CoC) communities understand how their system is functioning,
2. Help CoCs determine if they have deployed the right combination of strategies and resources, and
3. Gauge their progress toward the goal of ending homelessness.
In addition, HUD uses this system-level performance information as a competitive element in its annual CoC Program Competition (the NOFA).
Longitudinal Systems Analysis (LSA). Like SPMs, the LSA is a report entirely produced from data stored within HMIS. The LSA provides HUD and CoCs with critical information about how people experiencing homelessness use their system of care.

Each of the following stakeholders has its own responsibilities in relation to mandated federal projects:

CoC leadership. This role is responsible for coordinating the data review and submission process.
HMIS users. This role is responsible for reviewing its agency's data and making any necessary updates.
HMIS lead agency (ICA). This role is responsible for supporting CoC leadership and HMIS users to ensure that the most accurate and complete information is submitted to HUD.