The Department of Housing's new Homelessness Data Dashboard is inaccurate and dangerous

"I think you’re going to hear conservative talk radio use this Dashboard as a way to attack the efforts that are going on to combat homelessness."

“What the Homelessness Data Dashboard shows, on a daily basis, is unutilized shelter beds in our system,” said Benjamin Haynie, Chief of Program Development at the Rhode Island Department of Housing, and seated to the left of acting-Secretary of Housing Deborah Goddard at last week’s Interagency Council on Homelessness meeting. “This is not meant to be a tool that we use for people to look at it and say, ‘There’s a bed here, I’m going there.’

“This is giving the public an idea of what is going on. It also serves a purpose for us. It gives us immediate questions: How are there any unutilized shelter beds in our system last night?”

Established by State law, the Interagency Council on Homelessness was revived just before Christmas last year. The Dashboard was announced at the third meeting, held Thursday morning at the Providence Public Library on Empire Street.

Though the Homelessness Data Dashboard was offered in the spirit of providing information and ‘just asking questions,’ it appears to me that it serves a political purpose—to call into question the need for shelter beds and undermine the efforts of providers who struggle to provide shelter when there are far too few beds available.

On January 3rd, Rhode Island Governor Daniel McKee went on the right-wing Gene Valicenti Show and, based on the kind of information now widely available on Homelessness Data Dashboard, had the following exchange when pushed about shelter bed availability:

Governor McKee: In fact, all our beds are not even filled right now.

Gene Valicenti: You have shelter beds, you’re saying, open tonight. For anybody who’s homeless, there’s a bed for them tonight to stay warm. Are you saying that?

Governor McKee: If the call is made, there are beds that are available right now.

This was a lie.

Suggested improvements and objections to the Homelessness Data Dashboard were made at the Interagency meeting. Melina Lodge, Executive Director of the Housing Network of Rhode Island, noted that the data might be misinterpreted and give the public the wrong idea about the need for shelter beds.

Melina Lodge: The data is critical, so thank you for posting this publicly. As a person inside the sector, I’m a bit curious. I think there are lots of footnotes that are not footnoted. The public at large who read this will not know the unknown footnotes. Somebody read, “27 A [being at] only 53.3% utilization.” … The typical consumer might read that and say, “Oh, we have beds available that are not being utilized. Is this a crisis?”

This brings me to my second point. In this Dashboard, we are only talking about the bed—we aren’t talking about the need. I don’t know if there is a way to coordinate those two data points to say, “Yes, we have 1,514 beds, but we also know, based on some other data points, that there are 1900 people who need them.”

This feels like half of an equation. When you make data public, data can go either way. [We need to be] careful about not creating unintentional negative dialogue simply because we didn’t tell the whole story, not because we don’t know the whole story.

Benjamin Haynie: I agree. We’ve had that conversation many times, and landed on this version for now. Several versions would have inevitably created questions that get into the weeds. We tried to be as broad as possible. We’re doing some analytics on this, as we’re tracking how this updates every day... I agree with you. We’ve got to be careful about the unintended consequences and the trade-offs here, but we are trying to be cognizant of that and track this as best we can.

The Interagency Council’s DCYF representative might not have intended to, but he immediately pointed out the absurdity of the “data.”

DCYF Representative: I heard a lot about individual shelter beds, which is great, but I didn’t hear anything about additional family shelters, which there’s a tremendous need for. I’m assuming some of the [“open” family shelter] is due to the time it takes to move a family into a new shelter. Some unused space might be because a family has been offered acceptance, but they have to clean out the space from the last family. That said, if any of these [units] are available, I have 96 families that I can move into immediately.

I rose to talk about the political misuse of the “data.”

Steve Ahlquist: I have a few concerns about the Homelessness Data Dashboard, which Melina Lodge pointed toward. I’m worried that critics will use this “data” to claim that plenty of beds are available—as the Governor did when he was recently on the Gene Valincenti show.

We know this data has issues - or at least potential issues - but there are no caveats or footnotes there. It should probably say, “There may be 81 unused family beds, but the DCYF is ready to move 96 people in immediately.” It doesn’t say that. I don’t think there’s enough information on the Dashboard, and I think you’re going to hear conservative talk radio use this Dashboard as a way to attack the efforts that are going on to combat homelessness.

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One would think that some changes would have been made after serious concerns were raised about the Homelessness Data Dashboard. That has not happened. Instead, on Thursday evening, Secretary of Housing Deborah Goddard appeared before the House Finance Committee and presented the Dashboard as offering accurate and useful information.

And that is not true.

[All quotes above were edited for clarity.]