Chapin Hall

Credible data are key to preventing and ending youth homelessness—but collecting them can be costly and time-consuming. 

To address this challenge, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development funded Chapin Hall and the Partnership Center, Ltd. to develop innovative methods for using administrative data to count and describe the characteristics of homeless youth, estimate the prevalence and incidence of youth homelessness, and explore pathways into homelessness from youth-serving systems. 

As part of the Youth Homelessness Data Solutions Project (YHDSP): 

• We hosted a virtual learning consortium which focused our attention on how Continuums of Care (CoCs) can better use their administrative data.  

• We inventoried and appraised administrative data from multiple South Carolina state agencies.  

• We linked and analyzed data from South Carolina’s four CoCs along with data from the South Carolina Departments of Education, Social Services, and Juvenile Justice.  

Dive into the full report for details on what we did, what we learned, and what these findings mean for preventing youth homelessness. 

We also created three practical resources to help communities make the most of their administrative data: 

• Equip App—Upload Homeless Management Information System (HMIS) data into this tool to estimate the prevalence and incidence of youth homelessness in your region. (Note: This link will download a .zip file.)

• Equip App How-To Guide—Follow these step-by-step instructions to use the app,  

• Guide to Leveraging Administrative Data—Learn how to leverage administrative data to understand pathways into and predictors of youth homelessness. 

The YHDSP team was led by Senior Research Fellow Amy Dworsky, and included Policy Analyst Madeline Youngren, Researcher Kay Chansiri, and Robert Brodrick (formerly of the Partnership Center, Ltd.).   

Chapin Hall is a leader in the field of youth homelessness research. Beginning with its ground-breaking Voices of Youth Count initiative, Chapin Hall has been partnering with service providers, public agencies, funders, and young people with lived experience across the U.S. to conduct research that can inform efforts to prevent and end youth homelessness.  

Want to know more about this project? Contact Amy Dworsky. 

Read the full reportDownload the Equip App
Read the Equip App How-To Guide
Read the Guide to Leveraging Administrative Data