Entries by Mary Ann Priester

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Research and News Roundup: May 2024

The Research and News Roundup is a monthly blog series that features a curated list of recent news and research related to housing instability, homelessness, and affordable housing. Together, these topics provide insights about the full housing continuum and provide community stakeholders with information about emergent research, promising practices, and innovative solutions related to housing and homelessness.
This month’s Research and News Roundup features an overview of mental health and housing instability, guidance on how health care systems and hospitals can collaborate with communities to address homelessness, and a recent analysis assessing office space to housing conversion potential for 83 major cities including Charlotte.

June 12, 2024 by
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2024 Point-in-Time Count Data: Sheltered Homelessness and Overall Counts

Annually, Continuums of Care (CoCs) across the United States conduct the HUD Point-in-Time (PIT) count to gather data on homelessness. The primary goals of the PIT are to estimate the number of individuals and households experiencing homelessness and to better understand their demographics and living conditions. These data are used in tandem with other local and national data to inform policies and programs focused on preventing and ending homelessness. The PIT count has two components: the Sheltered Homeless Census, which counts individuals in shelters, safe havens, or transitional housing, and the Unsheltered Homeless Census, which counts those living in places not intended for habitation, such as streets or vehicles. Together these components provide a comprehensive snapshot of homelessness on one night in January in Charlotte-Mecklenburg.

A previous blog provided data from the 2024 Unsheltered Homeless Census and a discussion of the limitations of the PIT count. This blog provides an overview of the 2024 Sheltered Homeless Census and overall PIT count data.

May 23, 2024 by
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2024 Point-in Time Count Data: Unsheltered Homelessness

On January 25, 2024, 28 CMPD officers and 35 teams of over 200 community volunteers came together to ensure #EverybodyCountsCLT and conduct the 2024 Point in Time Count Unsheltered Census. Together these dedicated community members facilitated a successful Count by providing logistical support and conducting surveys with people experiencing unsheltered homelessness across Mecklenburg County.

This blog focuses on findings from the 2024 Unsheltered Homeless Census and the work being done locally to address unsheltered homelessness in Charlotte-Mecklenburg.

May 15, 2024 by
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Leveraging Stella P to Enhance Homeless Services Systems: Decreasing Days Homeless

Stella, developed by the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), serves as an analytical and strategic tool for Continuums of Care (CoCs) to examine the dynamics of their homeless services system performance. The Stella Performance Module (Stella P) visualizes a homeless system’s performance using the CoC’s Longitudinal System Analysis (LSA) data. Stella P empowers communities to develop and monitor strategies to improve system performance. This blog is the third installment in a series of blogs examining Charlotte-Mecklenburg’s latest LSA data utilizing the Stella P Module.
This blog provides an overview of days homeless, local performance on this metric, and highlights opportunities for performance improvement within the Charlotte-Mecklenburg homeless services system.

May 8, 2024 by
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Research and News Roundup: April 2024

The Research and News Roundup is a monthly blog series that features a curated list of recent news and research related to housing instability, homelessness, and affordable housing. Together, these topics provide insights about the full housing continuum and provide community stakeholders with information about emergent research, promising practices, and innovative solutions related to housing and homelessness.

This month’s Research and News Roundup features recent research on the impact of housing instability on older adults, strategies on resource use to support housing-related services for people experiencing homelessness, and a synopsis of President Biden’s proposed budget investments to increase affordable housing and housing stability.

May 2, 2024 by
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One Number Update: March 2024

Almost five years ago, Mecklenburg County Community Support Services introduced the “One Number”. Since its inception in 2019, the “One Number” has served as the primary benchmark for the number of people experiencing homelessness in Charlotte-Mecklenburg.

Generated from the Homeless Management Information System (HMIS), the One Number encompasses individuals enrolled in Emergency Shelter (ES), Transitional Housing (TH), Street Outreach (SO), Permanent Housing (PH) (if no move-in date to housing is recorded yet) and Coordinated Entry (CE) programs in HMIS. It includes both those experiencing sheltered homelessness and a portion of those experiencing unsheltered homelessness. It also provides a comprehensive By-Name List of persons experiencing homelessness in Charlotte-Mecklenburg.

One Number data not only provides an overall count of homelessness in Charlotte-Mecklenburg, but also can be broken down by household and population type and disaggregated by demographic characteristics such as race, ethnicity, gender, and age. In addition, One Number data also facilitates the examination of inflow and outflow patterns associated with homelessness. The Housing Data Snapshot, the hub for the latest data related to housing and homelessness in Charlotte-Mecklenburg, highlights inflow to (Newly identified, Returns from Permanent Housing, Returns for Inactivity) and outflow from (Exit to Permanent Housing, Exit to Inactivity), homelessness.

This week’s blog post provides the most recent One Number update; latest trends and analysis; and what this means for Charlotte-Mecklenburg.

April 24, 2024 by
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Leveraging Stella P to Enhance Homeless Services Systems: Increasing Permanent Exits from the Homeless Services System

Stella, developed by the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), serves as an analytical and strategic tool for Continuums of Care (CoCs) to examine the dynamics of their homeless services system performance. The Stella Performance Module (Stella P) visualizes a homeless system’s performance using the CoC’s Longitudinal System Analysis (LSA) data. Stella P empowers communities to develop and monitor strategies to improve system performance. This blog is the second installment in a series of blogs examining Charlotte-Mecklenburg’s latest LSA data utilizing the Stella P Module.

This blog provides an overview of system exits, local performance on this metric, and highlights opportunities for performance improvement within the Charlotte-Mecklenburg homeless services system.

April 17, 2024 by
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Leveraging Stella P to Enhance Homeless Services Systems: An Introduction to Charlotte-Mecklenburg’s LSA Data Analysis

Stella is an analysis and strategy tool developed by the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) to support Continuums of Care (CoCs) in understanding the performance of their homeless services system. The Stella Performance Module (Stella P) visualizes homeless system performance using a CoC’s Longitudinal System Analysis (LSA) data so that the community can develop and monitor system performance improvement strategies. This blog is the first in a series of blogs that will examine Charlotte-Mecklenburg’s most recent LSA data using the Stella P Module.
This blog provides an overview of the LSA and Stella P, highlights the System Performance Map, and explains how this tool can be used to develop system performance improvement strategy in Charlotte-Mecklenburg.

April 11, 2024 by
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Research and News Roundup: March 2024

The Research and News Roundup is a monthly blog series that features a curated list of recent news and research related to housing instability, homelessness, and affordable housing. Together, these topics provide insights about the full housing continuum and provide community stakeholders with information about emergent research, promising practices, and innovative solutions related to housing and homelessness.
This month’s Research and News Roundup features the National Low Income Housing Coalition’s assessment of rental housing availability both locally and nationally, the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies 2024 America Rental Housing report which provides analysis and insights into the state of the rental housing market in the United States, and findings from the Los Angeles County Women’s Needs Assessment.

April 4, 2024 by
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One Number Update: February 2024

Almost five years ago, Mecklenburg County Community Support Services introduced the “One Number”. Since its inception in 2019, the “One Number” has served as the primary benchmark for the number of people experiencing homelessness in Charlotte-Mecklenburg. In July 2023, the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Continuum of Care implemented a new Homeless Management Information System (HMIS): Clarity Human Services: Bitfocus. This system transition was undertaken to facilitate system improvement by strengthening and enhancing the local homeless services data system. The transition was necessary in order to support the community’s shared goal of delivering efficient and effective, impactful, data-informed homeless services. However, due to the transition, One Number metric data updates on the dashboard were delayed as we worked to develop the needed reports to provide these metrics to the community. We are excited to share that with the support of Community Solutions, Built for Zero, the needed reports have been finalized and we are able to resume our monthly reporting of the One Number.

This week’s blog post provides an overview of the One Number update, what’s changed, the latest trends and analyses; and what this means for Charlotte-Mecklenburg.

March 28, 2024 by