What is by-name data?

By-name data is a comprehensive database of every person in a community experiencing homelessness, updated in real time. Using information collected and shared with their consent, each person on the list has a file that includes their name, homeless history, health, and housing needs. This data is updated monthly, at minimum.

Quality by-name data enables teams to account for every person experiencing homelessness in real time. Achieving it is a necessary and catalytic step toward making homelessness rare, brief, and nonrecurring.

Note: A Built for Zero community only achieves the milestone of reaching quality by-name data when the Built for Zero Data Team validates that the community has officially reached this data standard. Please reach out to your coach or email bfzdatasupport@community.solutions if you have more questions about this process.

Why is by-name data critical for reducing homelessness?

• By-name data helps improve outcomes for individuals. By maintaining a by-name list, communities have current and detailed information on every person experiencing homelessness in a given population. With that information, they can better match housing solutions to individual needs. By-name lists often form the basis for case conferencing meetings, where providers across a community come together to coordinate and drive forward housing solutions for specific people.

• By-name data enables communities to understand whether they are making progress and where to target systems changes. Communities can track the changing size, composition, and dynamics of their population experiencing homelessness. This information helps them prioritize resources, test changes to their system, and understand whether their efforts are driving numbers down toward sustained reductions.

• By-name data gives communities the real-time picture they need to keep improving. Real-time, by-name data is modeled on approaches other public health challenges have used: an annual snapshot of cases does not equip officials with the information they need to know whether they are making progress. Real-time data shows the scale and scope of the problem, whether strategies are working, and where the system needs to adjust. Without this information, communities risk solving yesterday’s problem rather than driving toward measurable, lasting reductions.

What six data points can communities track through their by-name data?

Inflow. When a person loses housing and enters homelessness, they are part of what is called inflow. Inflow data captures people who are:

• Newly identified, or new to homelessness. 
• Returned from housing, or people who experienced homelessness before, got connected with housing, and now are homeless again
• Returned from Inactive, or people who experienced homelessness before and exited to unknown destinations (left town, were institutionalized for 90+ days etc), and now are homeless again

Actively homeless. People who are currently experiencing homelessness are categorized as being actively homeless.

Outflow. Outflow refers to people who have exited homelessness. This typically includes two groups:

• Housing placements, or people who have been connected to permanent housing
• Moved to inactive, or people who exit homelessness without support from the homeless response system, such as finding their own housing, moving out of the community, or entering a long-term stay in an institution

MEDIA KIT

You can access our Built for Zero media kit at this link.