San Diego County is making data on homeless services more accessible to the public through a new dashboard released earlier this week.
The county’s Office of Homeless Solutions tracks a variety of programs aimed at reducing homelessness, including efforts to help older adults and youth facing housing instability, provide emergency housing for people in the unincorporated areas of the county and aid for those living in encampments.
Office of Homeless Solutions Director Dijana Beck said this information was previously available upon request, but this is the first time the data has been compiled and made readily available to the public.
“(The) Office of Homeless Solutions is turning five this year, so we felt that we're in a good place now to make this data public,” Beck said. “We wanted to be more transparent so the public can see our progress, see all the good programs that we're administering and all the folks that we are serving regionwide.”
On the dashboard, each program has a section with relevant information that may include demographics, number of people served and how many exit into stable housing.
Beck said the Board of Supervisors recently made requests to view specific data related to homelessness in the unincorporated areas and to release certain information to the public, which pushed her office to make all of it accessible.
She said these programs are all in alignment with the county’s outline for ending homelessness. Other county programs work toward that goal as well, but Beck said those on the dashboard exclusively serve people experiencing or are at risk of homelessness.
“We also show, most importantly, how they're connected to housing and how many we’re connecting to housing,” Beck said. “Our main goal is to either stabilize people in their current housing or connect them to more stable housing options, and so a lot of our programs show those kinds of outcomes.”
Beck said her office wanted to make the dashboard as clear as possible so anyone can track the county’s progress. She hopes people in San Diego County can better understand what advancements are being made, and what programs they or someone they know could utilize.
The goal is to update the dashboard monthly. Beck said the dashboard is a first draft, and her office is open to input from the public on possible improvements.
