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January 2022 HMIS Agency Admin Eblast

Happy New Year,

While we won't be holding an Agency Admin meeting this month, we are providing this HMIS Agency Admin Eblast to provide you with some very important updates.

Mark Your Calendar!

All Emergency Shelters, Transitional Housing, Safe Haven Rapid Re-Housing and Permanent Supportive Housing programs are required to attend the Sheltered PIT & HIC Orientation. 

Very Important

• Participation is not OPTIONAL – We want you to be prepared for the information that HUD requires from you about YOUR programs so PLEASE make plans to send someone to the ORIENTATION that will be able to share the information with all staff in your agency that will be involved. 

• Some of the data that will be required - > Knowing how MANY BEDS you offer at your facilities, Accurate Entry/Exit data entered for 1/26/22, 100% Data Completeness for clients, FUNDING SOURCES for your programs and more

Please plan to send someone from your agency to represent the above program types that are required to report PIT and/or HIC data. The training is Monday January 24th @ 10:00AM. It will be held via the Zoom Platform.



If you have not already done so, please be sure to Register Now! After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.

Planning for the Unsheltered PIT is well underway. The scheduled date is January 26th, 2022 for the street count. Next day interviews will be held on January 27th and January 28th. This is a reminder that all CoC funded agencies are required to participate in this upcoming Point-in-Time count.

Team Registration for Unsheltered PIT

If you have not already done so, you can register to join a team on the night of the count via this link: https://detroit.pointintime.info/.

Please communicate with the other members of your team before signing up to determine the following:

• Your team name (this will be needed in the registration form)
• The area(s) you wish to count in. Refer to the PIT Regions map located here. Please note we likely will not be able to accommodate all preferences.
• The name of your team leader (the team leader will be responsible for ensuring all team members received on-going communication about the PIT and will be a primary point of contact for HAND).

Next-Day Interview Registration

• If your agency would prefer to do next-day interviews as a way to fulfill participation requirements, please sign up for a interview time/location here: https://signup.com/client/invitation2/secure/437034759086040086/true#/invitation

For More information on the Upcoming Point-in-Time Count refer to https://www.handetroit.org/pit.

For Questions regarding your Agency's involvement in this activity, contact Amanda Sternberg @ amanda@handetroit.org

The quarterly RRH/PSH Housing Move-In Date Audit Exercise is just around the corner. HAND staff will be sending out emails during the first week in February with a copy of most recent Housing Move-In Date Audit report for review, corrections, and inputs.

The Audit Exercise emails generally go out to the Agency Administrators. Please contact Shanna Cherubini (shanna@handetroit.org), no later than January 31st, to report any staffing/contact information changes that occurred since the last exercise in November.

Providers can begin preparing now by making sure that all data entry is up-to-date through the end January. This includes making sure all new clients have been entered, closing out any unexited clients that are no longer receiving services, and verifying that everyone in housing currently has the correct housing move-in date listed. For a complete list of clients with housing move-in date information, please run the Detroit Housing Move-In Data Audit report located in ART > Public Folder > Provider Specific > Detroit > Data Quality & Audit Reports

Quarterly Housing Move-In Date Schedule (for future reference):

Emails generally go out during the first week of the month and providers are given approximately two weeks to review the reports, make corrections, and submit the final spreadsheets with the requested status update notes. 

Audit Exercise Completed Time Period Covered

February November-January

May February-April

August May-July

November August-October

Due to the ever-changing nature of homeless funding and reporting needs, data collection requirements for RRH/PSH have continued to grow and evolve over the years. HAND is committed to ensuring our providers stay abreast of these changes as they occur. As such, the HAND recently released a new all-encompassing job aid titled 'Permanent Housing Entry/Exit and Move-In Guidance'.

The job aid was recently presented at the RRH workgroup meeting and will be shared again at the PSH workgroup meeting later this month. We strongly encourage all RRH/PSH providers to download and review the document in its entirety as it addresses some recent changes to the housing move-in date guidance (related to security deposit only assistance, EHV vouchers and exits to family/friends permanent tenure).

SSA Cost of Living Adjustment (COLA)

As you all may be aware, each year, usually in January, the Social Security Administration release the Cost-of-Living Adjustment (COLA) which details the SSI annual increase.

The SSA Fact Sheet can be found here.

If a client in your program is receiving SSI/SSDI we request that you to update their income to reflect the increase.

The job aid for updating sub-assessments (income, health, disability and non-cash) can be found here.

Please update client’s income records who are receiving SSI/SSDI by March 31, 2022.

All other clients whose income have changed at any time should be updated immediately after the staff working with the client is informed. This update should be done as an “UPDATE” interim assessment, if the client(s) income changes at exit the information should be updated on the “EXIT” assessment.

Important information:

Old income that is no longer valid must be “end dated” at least one day prior to the new income entry (this should be done within the same interim or exit assessment). This prevents client’s gross monthly/annual income totals from overestimating.

Remember: If clients have been in your program for one year or more, you must enter an “Annual” interim assessment within 30 days of the clients Anniversary date.

Benefits of Updating Income/Non-Cash Information:

• Helps data to be more accurate so that we can more accurately reflect what’s going on in our community in regard to client income
• Shows the progress of clients income and mainstream benefits from the time a client enters a program (and/or the system) until the time they exited a program (and/or the system) (ex.: this information can be used to show the work the program has done to increase client income/mainstream benefits)
• For providers submitting APRs; updating income can more accurately reflect data reported in the APR section(s):
• 18 (Client Cash Income Category – Earned/Other Income Category – by Start and Annual Assessment/Exit Status),
• 19a1 (Client Cash Income Change-Income Source – by Start and Latest Status)
• 19a2 (Client Cash Income Change – Income Source – by Start and Exit)

HMIS SPM and Longitudinal System Analysis Data Cleanup

• The LSA is upon us and the HMIS team will be reaching out to you if there are any updates or work that needs to be done on the providers side. We will be in contact if certain errors need to be fixed and we will need to respond within a timely manner so we do not get behind on submitting. In the months to come, please be on the look out for any emails that the HMIS team at HAND sends to you.

• Shelters and Transitional Housing please run a Discharge Destination report for 10/1/2020- 9/30/2021 and review and/or update any “Don’t Know” & “Other” destinations. Please put in a help desk request if you have any questions.

Avoiding Expiring User Licenses

All HMIS users are required to successfully pass a number of annual recertification courses in order to maintain their HMIS User License. These recertification courses are located in the Learning Center and outlined in our training grid. Each user must complete the required recertification courses within the one year timeframe to keep their User License active.

A User may report that they cannot login nor reset their password. Instead of attempting to reset their password, check to see what their Expiration Date is for their HMIS license. If you are unsure of when a user's license will expire, you can perform a search in Community Services (ServicePoint) by going to Admin > Add/Edit User. Type in the user's name to locate their profile and make note of their expiration date. Ensure the user complete all required courses prior to that date.

Compile their certificates into a single .pdf document and submit the training certificates via HAND's helpdesk. If you do not have the software to combine PDFs, there is a free online tool at https://combinepdf.com/ which multiple PDFs can be uploaded to which can be combined into a single PDF.

It is recommended that reminders be placed on Users' and Agency Admins' calendars 2 or 3 weeks prior to Expiration Dates to avoid interruption to access to ServicePoint. Once all the Recertification's are completed, please upload them to the HelpDesk as a single PDF, selecting "Submit Training/User Agreement" as your "Issue/Problem".

Submitting HelpDesk Requests

When submitting a HelpDesk request, please be specific when selecting your "Problem/Issue", as the HelpDesk has conditional logic which takes you to the next logical field depending on the "Problem/Issue" you select. You will receive an automated confirmation email IF  your request is Complete. if you do not receive a confirmation email, that is an indication that your request is Incomplete and you will need to resubmit your request. There should be only rare occasions to select "Other" as your "Problem/Issue", so please review the pick list to determine which selection is most fitting before selecting "Other" as your Problem/Issue".

As with Merge Requests and Updating Social Security Numbers, accuracy is essential in all requests to ensure you obtain the desired result(s).