New Homelessness Point-in-Time Count survey with HUD 2024 changes

[JeremiahLindemann]

New Homelessness Point-in-Time Count survey with HUD 2024 changes

In November 2023, the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) updated several demographic variables expected in the Homelessness Point-in-Time Count. Learn more about the HUD 2024 guidance. 

To assist customers with their January 2024 count, we have updated the Point-in-Time Count survey, report, and documentation to follow the new guidance. Usually, we update our ArcGIS Solution: Homelessness Point-in-Time Count to include the HUD guidance when it changes. However, the timing of our ArcGIS Solutions release didn’t allow us to do this. 

Use the instructions below to create a survey and generate a report, based on the updated HUD requirements. We will also incorporate these changes and other enhancements into a future ArcGIS Solutions release in 2024.

Create a homelessness count survey

The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) has a defined set of questions about demographics and life experiences to ask individuals experiencing homelessness.

To create a Homelessness Point-in-Time Count survey, complete the following steps:

1. Download the attachment PITCount2024SurveyandReport.zip file from the post
2. Unzip the folder to a location on your computer.
3. Download ArcGIS Survey123 Connect, if needed.
   Note: It is required to use Survey123 Connect version 3.19.104 or greater.
4. Start Survey123 Connect.
5. Sign in to your ArcGIS Online organization.
6. Click New survey.
7. Provide a title for your survey such as Homelessness Count 2024.
8. Under Create a new survey from: click File. Browse to the location of the unzipped PITCount2024SurveyandReport folder and choose the XLS Form titled HomelessnessCount.xlsx.
9. Click Create survey.
10. The survey is created and opened for you to view. In Survey123 Connect, you'll see a preview of the survey you just created.
11. Click the Publish button, click the Publish Survey button, and then click the OK button.
12. Close Survey123 Connect and Microsoft Excel.

Your survey is available for download and use in the Survey123 field app.

You may now start conducting the survey. Use the steps in the conduct point-in-time counts section of the documentation to learn how to use the survey.

Please keep in mind the survey and resulting feature service should not be shared publicly in order to protect personal information, and only people with ArcGIS Online logins should access the survey.

Generate HUD Report

The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) has specific guidelines that govern how Continuums of Care must report the results of their point-in-time counts. We provide a file that can be used to create an ArcGIS Notebook that will create a summary report of the information required by HUD.

To create a Homelessness Point-in-Time Count report, complete the following steps:

1. Sign in to ArcGIS Online as a user with privileges to create notebooks.
   Note: You must be assigned a role of Administrator or custom role which includes the privilege to create, edit, and run ArcGIS Notebooks and complete the following steps.
2. On the navigation bar of your organization, click Notebook.
   The Notebooks home page opens.
3. From the Notebooks home page, create a blank notebook, click New Notebook, and choose Standard from the drop-down list.
4. Navigate to the PITCount2024SurveyandReport folder, open the HUDReport.txt file and copy all the contents of the text file onto your clipboard.
5. Place your cursor inside the empty cell, below the text Now you are ready to start! and paste the text into the cell.
6. Click Save, click Save As and then give your notebook the title HUDReport 2024.
7. Open ArcGIS Online in a new tab in your browser and navigate to the Homelessness Count 2024 hosted feature layer item you created when publishing the survey. Tip: This will be in a folder named Survey-Homelessness Count 2024.
8. In the browser URL, copy the item id. This should include everything from the equal sign forward https://www.arcgis.com /home/item.html?id=<your item ID>
   Go back to the HUDReport 2024 notebook. Search for the following: survey_fs_item_id = "PASTE YOUR ITEM ID HERE"
9. Replace the text in the quotes "PASTE YOUR ITEM ID HERE" with the ID you copied above.
10. Click Save and click Save.
11. Click Cell > Run All.
12. Upon completion of the notebook, click the link to the report and download the spreadsheet.

This HUD Report is a summary of all the point-in-time surveys that were conducted and are compiled with metrics that can then be shared with HUD. The xslx file will have multiple tabs at the bottom corresponding to different sections HUD asks reporting for. Each HUD Report is stored in your ArcGIS Online organization. By default, the item is stored with the date in the name of the item, for example, HUD_Report_YYYY-MM-DD-HH-MM-SS.

PITCount2024SurveyandReport.zip