Monarch Housing Associates understands the importance of data in efforts to build strategic plans to end homelessness. As we support communities in working to end homelessness, Monarch provides intensive supports for data management and analysis to ensure policies and strategies are grounded in a firm understanding of community need. Monarch Housing Associates partners with the New Jersey Housing Mortgage and Finance Agency – Homeless Management Information Systems (NJHMFA – HMIS) to enhance the use of locally gathered data from homeless service providers. Monarch conducts data analysis to explore data quality, statewide trends and system/program outcomes. Additionally, Monarch provides support to communities in identifying methods for data integration with sectors such as healthcare institutions to facilitate improved and targeted service delivery. Monarch continues to identify new ways to support communities in using their local data to enhance planning activities.
Highlights of our work in data analysis include:
- Point In Time Count Analysis – Monarch facilitates the annual Point in Time Count activities for the State of New Jersey. Our work with the PIT process includes development of the survey tool, community training, data clean-up and analysis and preparation of the final PIT reports. for more information on the Point-in-Time Count for the state of New Jersey please visit the NJCounts page.
- U.S. Dept. of HUD reporting – Monarch prepares HUD required reports including the Housing Inventory Chart (HIC), System Performance Measures, Data Quality Report, Longitudinal System Analysis (LSA) and Annual Performance Reports (APR) reports. Monarch assists communities in addressing data quality issues impacting accurate reporting and works with communities to develop mechanisms to support improvements in data quality.
- Project & System Monitoring – Monarch works with Continuums of Care to develop performance standards for use at the project and system level. Staff complete regular reviews of project performance in both data quality and project outcomes. We work with agencies and communities to identify strategies for improvement in areas of concern. Monarch also completes reviews of system outcomes based on HUD and locally developed performance standards. We support communities in understanding factors impacting poor performance to better target strategies to improve outcomes.
- Analysis of System Trends – Monarch works with NJHMFA-HMIS and local communities to develop tailored data analysis to understand system trends, population characteristics, program effectiveness and system outcomes. Monarch has prepared New Jersey and County specific Annual Homeless Assessment Reports based on HMIS data. Staff have completed analysis on racial equity utilizing HMIS data. Monarch has also created evaluation tools of coordinated assessment processes. We offer a variety of system analysis services to meet local needs in strategy development and system evaluation.
- Support in data matching – Monarch partnered with Rutgers Center for State Health Policy on a project linking HMIS data to state Medicaid data (MMIS). This unique initiative linked HMIS & MMIS data at a statewide level and explored patters of healthcare usage for persons experiencing homelessness as compared persons in housing, and also explored differences in healthcare usage for persons accessing permanent supportive housing as compared to counterparts continuing to experience homelessness. To see results of this study click here.