Welcome!
Here you’ll be able to access information and data specific to Colorado’s homeless prevention, response, and resolution systems.
The Colorado Homeless Management Information System (COHMIS) is a statewide database used to collect client-level data related to the provision of housing and services to persons experiencing homelessness and persons at-risk of experiencing homelessness. The following dashboards provide a variety of metrics about people who have had their information entered into COHMIS with the goal of providing a better understanding of the extent of homelessness, as well as the response services that exist, throughout each Continuum of Care (CoC) in Colorado.
A Continuum of Care is a regional or local planning body that coordinates housing and services funding for families and individuals experiencing homelessness. There are four CoCs in Colorado:
Metro Denver CoC covers the 7-county metro region, including Adams, Arapahoe, Boulder, Broomfield, Denver, Douglas, & Jefferson counties. The COHMIS Lead agency for Metro Denver is the Metro Denver Homeless Initiative (MDHI).
Northern Colorado CoC covers Larimer & Weld counties. The COHMIS Lead agency for Northern Colorado is Homeward Alliance.
Pikes Peak CoC covers El Paso County. The COHMIS Lead agency for Pikes Peak is Community Health Partnership (CHP)
Balance of State CoC covers all 54 of the remaining counties. The COHMIS Lead agency for Balance of State is the Division of Housing at the Colorado Department of Local Affairs.
Important Data Considerations & Limitations
The COHMIS Leads from each CoC are constantly looking at ways to improve our dashboards to ensure the metrics are as accessible and straightforward as possible. Homeless service data is complex and requires nuanced interpretation. We highly recommend that you visit the Definitions page before analyzing the data available on these dashboards.
Please be respectful as your view these dashboards as they represent people in our communities.
Do not use information from these dashboards in publications without first contacting the COHMIS Lead agencies to ensure you are interpreting information correctly. You can contact the COHMIS Leads by submitting a ticket at ZenDesk.
Data Timeliness & Data Collection Challenges
COHMIS is a care coordination system with the ability to reflect relatively real-time data, as it can be challenging for homeless service providers to enter data in a timely fashion. Many providers have limited staff capacity for data entry with others being required to enter similar information into additional databases. All of this results in back-dated data entry. The numbers associated with more recent reporting periods may be incomplete due to these data timeliness issues.
With that in mind, two identical reports pulled at different times of the year may show some differences in the data pulled.
It can also be challenging for homeless service providers to capture all of the required data elements for each person having their information entered into COHMIS. You will notice sections in the following dashboards that indicate 'Missing Data' when required values were unable to be collected. 'Missing Data' includes values of Data not collected, Client doesn't know, and Client prefers not to answer.
Duplicate Profiles
These dashboards reflect the unique count of Client & Household Identifiers associated with people having their information entered into COHMIS. However, we know there are a number of duplicate profiles due to data collection challenges associated with homeless services. COHMIS Leads regularly monitor the system for duplicate profiles, merging them as they are identified, but it is likely the overall numbers reflected in these dashboards are impacted by these records.
Underrepresented Populations
Agencies designated as Victim Service Providers (VSPs) who serve people fleeing domestic violence are prevented by law from entering personally identifying information about these participants into HMIS. These providers are generally required to use an HMIS Domestic Violence Comparable Database. Due to these requirements, we are unable to reflect the persons being served at VSP organizations in our COHMIS dashboards.