Prior Living Situation vs. Current Living Situation
Understanding a client’s “living situation” is critical to determining their eligibility for available community resources and is a mandatory component of the HUD HMIS Data Standards. Every client enrollment in HMIS needs to have the Prior Living Situation question answered for the client.
Programs such as Coordinated Entry and Street Outreach must also record a client's Current Living Situation (1) at the client's Entry into a provider, (2) when the client is assessed, (3) whenever their living situation changes, and (4) for every contact with the client made by Street Outreach staff.
While seemingly very similar, a client’s Prior Living Situation and Current Living Situation have different definitions and are used for different purposes, as described below.
What's the Difference?
A critical difference is that Prior Living Situation asks where the client was staying last night; while Current Living Situation asks where the client anticipates staying tonight. The answers can be the same or different:
When recording a client’s living situation in HMIS, you may see different required fields appear depending on the client’s answers; paper forms will show every possible option. The additional fields that may appear collect additional details about the client’s living situation such as length of time and number of times homeless.
Where is Prior Living Situation located in HMIS?
The Prior Living Situation question is located within the Housing Situation question series (3.917) in a client's Entry assessment, completed when they begin working with your program:
Where is Current Living Situation located in HMIS?
The Current Living Situation information is gathered in a sub-assessment. (Pro Tip: if you see it in whichever assessment you are completing for your client - fill it out, it’s required!)
Updating Data that may auto-populate from past enrollments:
If the Prior Living Situation field and/or Current Living Situation sub-assessment information have already been entered by other MN HMIS users in the past for your client, you will likely see that data auto-populated on the assessment. This is to help ease the burden of manually entering the data. However, always be sure to review the data for accuracy each time, UPDATE if needed, and then click Save on the assessment as usual!
Please reach out to the MN HMIS Helpdesk (mnhmis@icalliances.org) if you have any questions.