A critical aspect of the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act, as amended, is a focus on viewing the local homeless response as a coordinated system of homeless assistance options as opposed to homeless assistance programs and funding sources that operate independently in a community. To facilitate this perspective the Act now requires communities to measure their performance as a coordinated system, in addition to analyzing performance by specific projects or project types.
The Act has established a set of selection criteria for HUD to use in awarding CoC funding in section 427 that require CoCs to report to HUD their system-level performance. The intent of these selection criteria are to encourage CoCs, in coordination with ESG Program recipients and all other homeless assistance stakeholders in the community, to regularly measure their progress in meeting the needs of people experiencing homelessness in their community and to report this progress to HUD.
CoCs also play an integral role in Consolidated Plan (Con Plan) jurisdictions’ planning process. They are required to provide the jurisdiction with the information necessary to complete the Con Plan(s) for homeless assistance provided to persons within the CoC’s geographic area that falls within the Con Plan jurisdiction’s geographic area, including data on performance measures. HUD will use the system-level performance information as a competitive element in its annual CoC Program Competition and to gauge the state of the homeless response system nationally.
This page provides HUD guidance for CoCs on system-level performance, links to submitted system performance measures data since 2015 as both raw data (for local analysis purposes) and a published report (with accompanying Tableau visualizations), tools and instructions for collecting and reporting system performance measures locally, and trainings and videos to help communities interpret and use system performance measures locally to improve crisis response systems.
Stella Guides, Tools, and Webinars
This resources page provides guidance for CoCs on what Stella is, where to access it, and how to use it to better understand your system performance. Stella is a strategy and analysis tool that helps CoCs 1) understand how their system is performing and 2) model an optimized system that fully addresses homelessness in their area.
Date Published: May 2019
System Performance Measures: Data Submission Guidance
This document provides information to CoCs on how to successfully submit their System Performance Measures data to HUD. Staff should review the Data Submission Guidance and use it as a reference when preparing their data for submission. This document also includes a new appendix that explains validation errors that may appear during data entry and what causes them.
Date Published: February 2019
Quick Reference: Differences between LSA and SPM Reporting Logic
Both the Longitudinal System Analysis (LSA) and the System Performance Measures (SPM) provide CoCs with a look at their overall system functioning. The SPM report is a summary and year-to-year comparison of system wide counts, averages, and medians related to seven areas of performance. The LSA upload also includes data related to several of the same areas of performance, but the business logic defined by HUD for the two reports differs substantially. This brief document describes the differences.
Date Published: October 2018
System Performance Improvement Briefs
These two System Performance Improvement briefs highlight different aspects to help CoCs better understand and improve their homeless system. Data Quality and Analysis for System Performance Improvement gives key steps to analyzing System Performance Measures results and troubleshooting data quality issues known to influence performance results. Strategies for System Performance Improvement offers guidance on analyzing and interpreting performance data and identifying high-impact strategies for improving performance year-round.
Date Published: July 2017
Frequently Asked Questions on HUD's System Performance Measures
This document contains frequently asked questions (FAQs) about HUD’s System Performance Measures. The purpose of the System Performance Measures is to help communities gauge their progress in preventing and ending homelessness and provide a more complete picture of how well a community is achieving this goal. The FAQs include answers to general questions as well as questions about specific measures and Homelessness Data Exchange (HDX) submission.
Date Published: July 2016
System Performance Measure 7: Destination Classification
These documents provide guidance about the destination classifications used for System Performance Measure 7. The Housing Destination Summary document uses the destination types outlined in the HMIS to characterize outcomes for street outreach and show permanent versus temporary locations for all other project types. The Explanatory Note document explains why some destination types were removed from the calculation for this measure.
Date Published: March 2016
System Performance Measures Introductory Guide
The purpose of this introductory guide is to help CoCs understand how HUD expects CoCs to calculate and use these system-level performance measures as the established selection criteria for awarding CoC Program projects and to evaluate system performance.
Date Published: May 2015
System Performance Measures in Context
This document briefly summarizes the relationship of the system performance measures and how they will be used.
Date Published: July 2014
National Summary – System Performance Measures 2015-2019
This resource page provide tools for visualizing system performance measures at the national and CoC level since FY 2015. The first resource is a national summary of the data in a PDF format. The second resource links to a public Tableau page that provides a variety of visualizations of the system performance measures at the CoC level. The third resource links to the Power BI System Performance Measures resource which is another tool CoCs can use to visualize system performance measures data by CoC.
Date Published: October 2020
System Performance Measures Data Since FY 2015
This resource provides data on system performance measure information by Continuum of Care since FY 2015 in MS Excel format for use in local analysis. CoCs are given the option of providing updates to the past year’s submission with each new submission process which may result in some changes to past data over time. For more information on what CoCs are required to submit for system performance measures, please refer to System Performance Measures Programming Specs and Table Shells.
Date Published: October 2020
System Performance Measures Tools
The purpose of the System Performance Measures Tools page is to provide CoCs, HMIS administrators, and HMIS vendors the tools necessary to consistently calculate and analyze system performance measures.
Date Published: October 2019
System Performance Measures: HMIS Review Handout
This document provides a step-by-step process for Continuums of Care (CoCs) to review their Homeless Management Information System (HMIS) to ensure the system performance measures are being generated as accurately as possible.
Date Published: July 2016
2017 System Performance Measures Data Entry Training
To assist communities in entering their 2017 System Performance Measures Data in HDX, HUD has developed this training on the data entry requirements.
Date Published: March 2018
System Performance Measures: FY 2016 Data Submission Guidance Webinar
This webinar provides information to CoCs on how to successfully submit their FY 2016 System Performance Measures data to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). HUD and Technical Assistance providers respond to questions from attendees about the guidance.
Date Published: March 2017
HUD System Performance Measures: Guidance to Check SPM Data and Have Confidence in Numbers Webinar
This webinar assisted Continuum of Care (CoC) Leads as they prepared for the first submission of data on HUD’s System-level Performance Measures, due August 1, 2016.
Date Published: July 2016
Preparing for HUD's System Performance Measures Webinar
This webinar assisted CoCs and HMIS Leads as they prepared for the first submission of data on HUD’s System-level Performance Measures.
Date Published: June 2016
Submitting Your System Performance Measures Report in HDX Webinar
This webinar covers the process of submitting System Performance Measures reports in the HDX.
Date Published: June 2016
System Performance Measure Videos
These videos provide Continuum of Care (CoC) recipients and subrecipients with an overview of the system performance measures that are based on the requirements first laid out in the 2009 HEARTH Act.
Date Published: October 2015