Development of a Prioritization Tool for Re-Housing Opportunities

ICH was hired to help Cambridge Homeless Services (CHS) make improvements to their prioritization and assessment tools, which are used to assess clients for vulnerability in order to prioritize who gets offered housing opportunities and in what order. The new system needed to be compliant with HUD regulations, place minimal burden on vulnerable clients, and include a scoring and ranking system that could be fairly and accurately compared with previously collected data. ICH designed, pilot tested, and refined a new tool, and devised a scoring system and data crosswalk that allowed CHS stakeholders to compare results between the old system and the new one. ICH also provided technical assistance to CHS as they worked with their survey vendor to program the new tool into the system.