Chattanooga/Southeast Tennessee CoC

Background and Key Milestones

Chattanooga/Southeast Tennessee CoC joined the Built for Zero (BFZ) initiative in 2016 with a focus on veterans. At the time, Chattanooga’s city leadership was leading a strong push to end veteran homelessness, working to create political will and build momentum in the community. The city of Chattanooga reached functional zero for their veteran subpopulation in 2019, and since then has expanded their work to include the full Continuum of Care, bringing in the surrounding counties in Southeast Tennessee, many of which are rural. Expanding to build a comprehensive, CoC-wide by-name dataset required great amounts of strategic collaboration. In March 2024, they achieved the BFZ quality data milestone for all single adults. Chattanooga has also more recently been a part of Built for Zero’s Healthcare and Homelessness pilot, which has reinvigorated their system-level work. 

Before the Quality Data process

Before embarking on their quality data work with BFZ, Chattanooga, like many communities, faced the challenge of limited provider participation in their by-name dataset (BND). Information was missing – the by-name dataset was only including those who were unsheltered or in emergency shelters – and there wasn’t a straightforward way to calculate monthly inflow and outflow metrics or determine how many people were actively experiencing homelessness each month that was inclusive of everyone. 

Growing Pains

In 2023, Chattanooga’s homelessness response system underwent significant changes including staff turnover, transitioning to a new HMIS vendor (Client Track), and implementing a new coordinated assessment. In the midst of these changes, the community critically assessed participation in HMIS, focusing on the gap between providers who were conducting assessments and those who were entering data into HMIS. 

With such a high number of providers with varying levels of capacity for data entry, the Chattanooga Regional Homeless Coalition (CRHC) got creative. Instead of only focusing on increasing HMIS participation among local providers, they found success in implementing creative workarounds to collect data from the organizations not participating, like having staff enter assessment data for non-HMIS participating agencies, which has led to system improvement and a more complete picture of homelessness.

Bringing others to the table

The CRHC worked to strengthen engagement across the Regional Outreach Committee (ROC), VA, and other non-traditional providers such as libraries and hospitals. Chattanooga’s team engaged providers by promptly integrating them into case conferencing meetings, fostering trust and collaboration. As soon as a provider is identified by the team, they are trained on the housing assessment and integrated into case conferencing. Steven Howell, who has served in varying capacities ranging from Coordinated Entry Specialist to his current role of Director of Operations, has proven to be a key element in building and strengthening those relationships, keeping an eye on the data to ensure that engagement continues after the initial training and making sure that he is available as a resource. 

Growing confidence in a comprehensive BND

After implementing a new coordinated entry assessment in 2024, Chattanooga and the surrounding region had increased confidence in the completeness of their data. While the annual data from the Point-in-Time (PIT) count had not previously matched the region’s understanding of the number of people experiencing homelessness, having a better assessment and more comprehensive by-name dataset allowed for more strategic planning around the PIT Count, giving both urban and rural providers a better understanding of how many people are in their area and how to plan to effectively count them. These changes have led to more accurate data on both a monthly and annual basis and have provided the team with tools to monitor data fluctuations from month to month.

The community was able to identify that increased collaboration with the partners caused an initial “increase” in their actively homeless numbers — noting that there weren’t necessarily more people experiencing homelessness, but that they were getting more comprehensive data from their partners. The improvements to CRHC’s strategy included arranging client assessments to be done by outreach workers outside of local shelters — while clients wait in line to go inside — to ensure complete and accurate data even when a shelter doesn’t or can’t collect all the necessary data themselves. These efforts to increase provider participation strengthened the community’s confidence in its ability to have a comprehensive by-name dataset inclusive of all single adults experiencing homelessness in the community.

Focusing on rural providers

A primary piece of expanding provider participation has been around enhancing coordination and improving outreach infrastructure in rural areas of the CoC. Access to resources in those areas has become more robust and more complete. There has been a big push to connect with both the domestic violence service providers and schools in the rural areas. This work continues through an ongoing effort of relationship building and coordination following the initial push of getting people on board. The partner organizations have largely been open to working together and collecting data. Still, outreach and data collection require continuous work and resources. Even when the will is there, capacity for smaller organizations in rural communities can be a challenge. Ultimately, engagement with partners across the region has been successful because there is an understanding that it’s a shared regional effort with a common goal. 

Bringing equity into focus

Notably, Chattanooga’s team has committed to applying an equity lens to their work, conducting quarterly racial equity analyses on the by-name dataset to identify disparities. These analyses have supported the team in making changes that help to prioritize resources equitably and address gaps in services. Recognizing the need from the Latinx community, they made sure the community’s common assessment was available in both Spanish and English as a way to serve a more diverse population. This inclusive approach was further supported by collaborations with organizations like La Paz, which provides transitional housing and other services to the Latinx community. Additionally, the assessment does not require information about citizenship, and other identifying pieces of information can be refused. 

Coming to a shared (and documented!) understanding 

Throughout their ongoing improvement work, the team in Chattanooga has created several key resources to support collaboration. Today, they use a case conferencing template built with monthly data collection in mind, and the team is able to review inflow and outflow on a dashboard connected to the by name dataset. They have also implemented a tracking document to monitor provider participation, regularly comparing their list of providers from the Housing Inventory Count to the list of providers who are completing assessments and the ones who aren’t. This allows them to reach out to organizations who are serving people but not connecting them to the by-name dataset — and come up with a solution. This work has helped the team to recognize the importance of documenting their provider landscape and keeping an up to date inventory of which providers are providing data to the by-name dataset. 

In documenting their provider landscape, the team was able to see that they had comprehensive coverage of providers within the city limits, but were missing many providers serving rural populations. Conducting this exercise of documenting providers gave the team the structure to first identify which providers served their rural areas and then assess the level of by-name dataset participation of each provider. This information allowed them to identify which providers were a higher priority to integrate into the by-name dataset (larger providers, providers already collecting data) and which providers they may be able to bring in later in the process (smaller providers, less technologically enabled).

Continuing to improve, together

As Chattanooga and Southeast Tennessee work to reduce homelessness among the single adults in their community, knowing they have strong collaboration and willing participation from providers across their region and the homeless response system gives them confidence that reductions will be accurate, equitable, and sustainable. By fostering strong partnerships and continuously refining their data collection processes, the community has built a robust and inclusive system that not only addresses homelessness, but also ensures that solutions are equitable. 

As they move forward, the Chattanooga team remains dedicated to evolving their strategies, particularly through the Healthcare and Homelessness pilot, ensuring that their ongoing work is informed by comprehensive, high-quality data and a deep understanding of the needs of their most vulnerable populations. With this foundation, Chattanooga and Southeast Tennessee are well-positioned to continue making meaningful progress in reducing homelessness across their region.