Field Notes: Following Up on Alameda

written by Norm Suchar

June 27, 2012

A few months ago, we brought you a series of posts about Alameda County’s efforts to implement the HEARTH Act through performance measurement (here, here, and here). How have things gone since then? Well, they’ve just published another performance report, and the improvements are impressive. Here’s are a couple of highlights from the report:

• The system demonstrated a 30% increase in the rate of persons exiting programs with permanent housing from 33% in 2010 to 43% in 2011
• Both transitional housing and emergency shelter providers reduced the length of time between program entry and acquiring permanent housing by 8% and 6% respectively
• Finally, providers increased the numbers of persons exiting with some income who entered the system with none. Helping people to secure earned income remained a challenge for our system.

Here’s a chart that summarizes some of the permanent housing outcomes by program type, and there’s a lot more in the report. Nice work.