Housing AND Urban development Youth Homelessness System Improvement (YHSI) Data Grants
Leeze Castro I February 15, 2024
In November 2023, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development unveiled the Youth Homelessness System Improvement (YHSI) grants to support communities in enhancing or developing youth homelessness response systems. Included in this initiative is the allocation of up to $300,000 for data-related projects, aimed at bolstering the capacity to collect and utilize data regarding youth and young adults who are experiencing or at risk of homelessness. This emphasis on data underscores the grant’s goal of systemic change, enabling targeted, data-driven strategies to improve coordination and effectiveness of services for young people.
About Us
At System Change Partners, our goal is to leverage data to catalyze systemic improvements in tackling homelessness. With experience in homelessness data systems, data science, and evaluation, our mission is to bridge the gap between the passion for systems change and the practical, data-driven tools needed to achieve it. We specialize in designing data tools and infrastructure that provide real-time insights into system performance, enabling communities across the United States and abroad to prioritize equity as we measure, reduce, and end homelessness.
How We Can Help
As youth homelessness subject matter experts, we are familiar with all the various forms of data that CoCs use, especially the HMIS. But we also always pair our quantitative analysis with qualitative data collected with and from young people with lived experience, especially BIPOC, LGBTQIA2S+, disabled, and pregnant/parenting young people. This ensures communities have access to the most relevant and actionable solutions, coming straight from the most impacted young people.
Here are some ways that we can support your community leverage a YHSI Data Grant:
Housing gap analysis: assess the cost and supply of housing interventions for youth and compare this against the community’s system-level data. What is the gap? What should the community scale up or scale down in order to meet young people’s needs? What housing resources does the community ACTUALLY need in order to end youth homelessness? We can give your CoC these answers!
Equity analysis: examine the demographic data (race, ethnicity, disability, pregnant/parenting, LGBTQIA2S+ status) of young people at each part of the homeless response system, from inflow to housing, to uncover disparities and areas of improvement.
Landscape analysis: combine extensive qualitative data collection with lived experts and service providers, with quantitative data to build a set of comprehensive and actionable recommendations for system improvement.
Real-time By-Name List: create data infrastructure for the community to know every unaccompanied youth and young adult experiencing homelessness and housing instability, by name, in real-time. We can also help you set up real-time data for case conferencing too.
Data dashboards and reporting tools: document the findings from the above assessments and help communities start the improvement work equipped with interactive data tools to track progress on closing system gaps and equity goals.
Learn More About Us
Check out this webinar we did with our colleagues at The IDEA Collaborative. We are here to help you implement system improvement ideas identified throughout the YHSI process.
– Leeze Castro