The Housing Inventory Count (HIC): What to know and key dates
Perhaps due to the expansive community-wide effort that the Point-In-Time (PIT) rightly requires, it tends to get more air-time than the Housing Inventory Count (HIC). The HIC is an annual report of all the homeless-dedicated beds in each CoC region that goes alongside each programs’ PIT count. You can learn more about the HIC here. Together, the PIT and the HIC allow communities to identify potential gaps in service delivery and inform decisions around policies and funding.
We know that emergency shelters (ES) and transitional housing programs (TH) participate in the PIT, but what about permanent and rapid re-housing programs? While these programs do not conduct the full PIT count surveys, the number of people enrolled in these programs on the PIT night is still collected – either through HMIS data or by being asked directly. It is important for these programs to also ensure their client enrollments are up-to-date in HMIS immediately following the PIT night.
Key Dates for HMIS client-level data
February 12: Make sure data quality on those enrollments is accurate by Monday, February 12. (This is in alignment with the regular QDQ deadline, so get it all done at once!) ICA staff will send out instructions in advance to all programs with prompts to review PIT night HMIS data.
February 12-March 1: ICA staff with reach out to programs needing additional support between February 12-March 1.
Key dates for project inventory data:
January 22: CoCs will prompt local projects to review their bed/unit inventory, target population, funding sources and other HIC project data starting on/near January 22. Instructions will be provided.
February 16: Agencies will have until Friday, February 16 to review their HIC rows.
March 1: CoCs and ICA will review HIC data and reach out to agencies to clarify any data issues as needed through Friday, March 1.