New data portal offers extensive information about who is homeless in Sacramento County
Want to know how many people are unhoused in Sacramento County and whether that number is going up or down? That information and much more data on homelessness is now easy to find on an interactive data dashboard launched today.
The City of Sacramento, Sacramento County and Sacramento Steps Forward, the leading non-profit working to help unhoused residents break the cycle of homelessness, developed the dashboard in partnership as a first step in an effort to build understanding about people experiencing homelessness in an easy to use online format.
“We hope this public data took will help further efforts to continuously improve ways we can address our community’s homelessness challenge,” said Lisa Bates, Chief Executive Officer of Sacramento Steps Forward.
The dashboard is housed on the Sacramento Steps Forward website and details how many people are experiencing homelessness in any given month, and whether they are sheltered or living outdoors. It contains monthly numbers and year-to-year comparisons.
“This new dashboard provides greater transparency and accountability when it comes to the state of homelessness in Sacramento County,” said Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg. “It shows that in partnership with the county and Sacramento Steps Forward, we are getting thousands of people off the street, but we face a continued challenge as more people become homeless in our community.”
As of June 30, there were 5,123 people experiencing homelessness in Sacramento County, down slightly from 5,177 at the end of January. Working together, the partners housed 1,606 people in that period, but the number of people entering homelessness during that same period kept the number from falling further.
The website also includes demographic information and insights gathered through engagements with various sub-groups of people experiencing homelessness. Learn how to access information by watching this explainer video, which demonstrates how to view a breakdown of disabled veterans and the various reported living situations for that group.
The data is collected and shared through the Sacramento Continuum of Care’s Homeless Management Information System (HMIS). The information in the dashboard complements the bi-annual Point-In-Time Count (PIT Count) and is comprised of data reported from many homeless service providers throughout Sacramento County.
Data on unsheltered populations is by its very nature difficult to manage and has inherent limitations. The data in this new dashboard represents clients who have been engaged with services or sought services with providers that use the HMIS, and not all people experiencing homelessness have sought services from providers. The partnership intends to update the dashboard on a quarterly basis.
