Seattle/King County Homeless Management Information System (HMIS)
Seattle/King County's HMIS records encounters with services providers and programs that serve those experiencing homelessness or at risk of homelessness within Seattle and King County.
Encounters with homelessness services providers and programs in Seattle/King County.
Access
De-identified Seattle/King County HMIS data are available to researchers whose projects cannot be completed using aggregate data and whose requests are sufficiently large to not risk re-identifying individuals. Researchers must submit a data request using the online request form. King County DHCS and the HMIS Steering Committee conduct a review of all requests. If approved, a data use agreement then needs to be executed between the requester and King County DCHS. Researchers should review the data documentation before making a request to understand what data elements are available and relevant for their request.
The online request form asks for researcher and project details, specific data elements, population, timeframe requested, and planned data security procedures. Data use agreements are subject to annual review. To request the update of a previous data use agreement, researchers may use the same online request form.
Timeline for Access
The exact timeline for access will vary with the details of the request. Researchers are encouraged to plan ahead and allow as much time as possible for review of the data request, execution of a data use agreement (and other contracts if required for payment), and delivery of the data. The online request form allows researchers to specify a deadline for data delivery, but this is no guarantee of timely processing.
The data provider requests that researchers make a single data request that includes all aspects of what they expect to need, rather than submitting multiple requests. A single request is faster to process, even if the requester is asking for multiple analyses to be conducted or a large data pull.
Lag Time
The Seattle/King County HMIS is a live database, where records are updated as events occur. Data used for research is lagged at least one month, to allow for data quality corrections and periodic data uploads from service providers that collect data outside HMIS. The country's HMIS standard operating procedures are used to complete data entry within two business days of an encounter, although some data elements may take up to thirty calendar days to be reflected in the HMIS. Service providers that participate in data integration but do not use the HMIS software are asked to upload their data weekly to be integrated.
Cost
The cost of the data depends on the DCHS staff time required to prepare the requested data. Processing times of two hours or less are free of charge. Beyond the first two hours, staff time is charged at $100 per hour, with a 3-hour minimum.
Linking
The King County Performance Measurement & Evaluation team processes data requests and can link HMIS to other datasets before delivering data to researchers. Exact and probabilistic (fuzzy) matching can be used, depending on the availability of identifiers. Probabilistic matching is more commonly used due to data quality. Only de-identified data will be provided to researchers, so all linking must be done by the data provider prior to data delivery.
In addition to the identifiers below, identifiers exist to link individuals to households. Data may be requested for all individuals or only heads of household. Note that records may be incomplete if persons do not give consent to use their personally identifiable information or if this information was not able to be recorded at the time of an encounter. In these cases, records will still be assigned unique IDs.
Identifiers Available for Linking
- Name
- Social Security number
- Date of Birth
- Race
- Ethnicity
- Gender
- Veterans status
- Disabling condition
- Last permanent address
Data Contents
HMIS records encounters with service providers and programs that serve those experiencing homelessness or at risk of homelessness in a given geography, known as a continuum of care. Data include records of entry or exit into a program, such as a shelter or permanent supportive housing, or other contact, such as receiving outreach services. All HMIS systems must conform to minimum standards and include a standard set of variables specified by the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). Because a large number of service providers contribute to the HMIS, there may be additional program-specific data. HUD provides data dictionaries and other documentation and King County refers researchers to these resources to learn more about the included data elements.
In addition to dates of service, data may include additional demographic, health, housing, and service provision details.
The types of services whose encounter data is captured in the HMIS include prevention, street outreach, emergency shelter, transitional housing, rapid re-housing, permanent supportive housing, day centers, safe haven programs, and other services.
Some information is recorded at the household level and some is recorded at the individual level. Individual level data includes relationship to the head of household.
Partial List of Variables
Universal data elements: Demographic information, including veteran status and disabling condition; project start and exit dates; destination; location; housing move-in date; prior living situation; relationship to head of household (to link data across individual and household encounters).
May also include project-specific information, such as bed-night utilization, health information, income, insurance, dates of homelessness. Complete lists of variables are available in HUD's HMIS data dictionary.
J-PAL Randomized Evaluations Using this Data Set
Phillips, David and James Sullivan. Youth Homelessness Prevention: A randomized controlled trial. Ongoing evaluation
Other Documentation
J-PAL’s Evidence Review “Reducing and Preventing Homelessness: Lessons from Randomized Evaluations https://www.povertyactionlab.org/publication/reducing-and-preventing-homelessness-lessons-randomized-evaluations