Loose standards, tight lips: why easy access to client data can undermine homeless management information systems.

• Author: O'Brien, J.C.

INTRODUCTION

Although homelessness emerged as a widespread and widely recognized social problem nearly three decades ago, researchers, politicians, and homeless service providers nationwide still lack a reliable source of data on the size and demographics of the homeless population. (1) The Department of Housing and Urban Development ("HUD") has undertaken the Homeless Management Information System ("HMIS") initiative, designed to address this absence of information by collecting and aggregating data from homeless service providers across the country. (2) The success of HMIS is contingent upon the cooperation and sincere participation of the consumers of homeless services, the homeless themselves. The sincere participation of the homeless, however, is threatened by the current standards for disclosure of Protected Personal Information ("PPI") to law enforcement officials, which present consumers of homeless services with a strong disincentive to participate. In order to encourage the highest level of participation, and therefore the most accurate HMIS information, HUD should remove permissive disclosure of PPI based on an oral request from its Data and Technical Standards. Part I of this Comment discusses the history of homelessness, homelessness policy, and the HMIS initiative. Part II discusses the importance of accurate data to HMIS and the privacy standards which threaten to undermine it. Part III addresses competing interests with regard to disclosure of PPI. This Comment proposes that disclosure of PPI in HMIS based on the oral request of a law enforcement official should be prohibited.

1. HOW WE GOT TO HMIS

   1. Historical Context of Today's Homeless

      Homelessness is not a new phenomenon in the United States. (3) It has taken a variety of forms from post-Civil War transient workers, (4) to the shantytowns of the Great Depression, (5) to the urban skid rows of the 1950s and 1960s. (6) In the 1970s and 1980s, however, a new form of homelessness emerged, (7) characterized by increasing numbers of literally homeless individuals living in public spaces. (8)

      Not only did the shape of homelessness change, but the number of homeless individuals grew steadily in the 1980s. (9) The causes behind this new homelessness are far from clear. (10) Individual characteristics that increase personal vulnerability to homelessness such as disability, education, and addiction, as well as structural societal factors, like the economy and prevailing public policy, seem to play a role in a person becoming homeless. (11) Most attempts at explaining the spread of homelessness point to a convergence of some combination of the following structural factors in the late 1970s and early 1980s: lack of affordable housing; lack of income; and trends in public policy that decreased institutional support services for vulnerable members of society. (12)

      The homelessness that emerged in the 1980s was decidedly more visible (13) and seemed to break the traditional stereotypes of the homeless population. (14) Whereas earlier generations of homeless were itinerant travelers or were concentrated in urban skid rows, the homeless of the 1980s were in plain view of the public. (15) No longer isolated in run down neighborhoods, the homeless could not be written off as skid row "derelicts," and in the early 1980s, it became increasingly clear that the homeless of the day were a diverse group, covering an array of demographics. (16) The "single, middle-aged, white alcoholic" stereotype expanded to include single women, families, and minorities. (17)

      With increased visibility came a sudden public awareness of homelessness in America. (18) The media made homelessness a front page issue. (19) But even as the nation became increasingly conscious of homelessness as a pressing social issue, (20) it lacked an accurate understanding of the nature and extent of the problem. (21)

   2. Data on Homelessness

      In class, I ask my students to select the number of homeless in the United States from the following: (a) 250,000 to 500,000; (b) 500,000 to 1 million; (c) 2 million; and (d) over 3 million. Some students usually select each category and they are told that they are all right, depending upon the author quoted, the definition of homeless used, and the counting methodology. (22) The exercise described above by Professor Carl O. Helvie illustrates that throughout various iterations of homelessness in America, a standardized methodology for computing the number of homeless individuals is absent. (23) Numerous difficulties exist in counting the homeless or agreeing on an accurate estimate. (24) To begin with, the very nature of homelessness leaves those experiencing it outside the realm of traditional census methods, which operate largely on the "assumption that nearly everyone in the United States can be reached through an address." (25) In the absence of any consistent data collection, estimates of the number of homeless in America vary widely. (26)

      Mary Ellen Hombs and Mitch Snyder advanced one of the first reliable estimates to gain traction in their 1982 report, Homelessness in America: A Forced March to Nowhere. (27) Hombs and Snyder posited that in 1982, 2.2 million individuals in America lacked shelter and they were "convinced that the number of homeless people in the United States could reach 3 million or more during 1983."(28) Only two years later, HUD estimated that the total number of homeless individuals was between 250,000 and 350,000 nationally. (29) These drastically disparate estimates, neither of which was grounded in any hard statistical evidence, (30) set the stage for an ongoing debate over the number of homeless in America for nearly three decades. (31)

      Arguing over numbers seemed to miss the point. Knowledge that the number of people in our society without shelter is in the hundreds of thousands is enough to identify a major social problem in need of addressing. This view, however, disregards the importance of data in adequately addressing any social problem. (32) According to Peter Rossi, Professor and Director of the Demographic Research Institute at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, in order "to devise effective programs and policies and to allocate appropriate amounts and kinds of resources to them, it is essential to know with some confidence the total number of the homeless and how fast it is changing." (33) Not only must we understand the size of the homeless population, but an effective solution requires other data as well, such as the distribution and composition of the population. (34)

      Unfortunately, when modern homelessness entered the nation's conscience as a social issue that demanded attention, no such data existed. (35) In the United States in the 1980s, "awareness of and concern for the homeless ... far outstripped our knowledge." (36) The nation's reaction to the problem reflected this absence of a deep understanding or a commitment to obtaining the necessary data.

   3. America's Response to Modern Homelessness

      Homelessness programs and policies have evolved dramatically since the early 1980s, from exclusively local emergency measures to federally coordinated support structures.

      1. Initial Response

         Early one morning, in a village located on the banks of a river, a woman walked to the river's edge and discovered, much to her horror, that the river was filled with baskets rushing downstream and that each basket held a baby. Aware of the danger the babies faced, she quickly ran back and mobilized the village's inhabitants. Everyone rushed to the river and began fishing as many babies out as they could. Many more slipped by than they were able to save, but they toiled on anyway, so consumed by their task that it never occurred to them to send some one upstream in order to find out how the babies were getting into the river in the first place. (37) America's immediate response to the growing numbers of homeless in the 1980s resembled the reaction of the villagers described above. (38) Faced with large numbers of homeless individuals, hungry and without shelter, communities reacted by establishing soup kitchens and shelters. (39) These early initiatives were generally local, (40) and designed to address the immediate needs of those on the street in specific communities. (41) Many viewed the unprecedented homelessness of the early 1980s as a temporary byproduct of a sagging economy(42) and in a reflection of this belief, the homeless assistance system that developed in the 1980s was set up to manage the problem of homelessness rather than to end it. (43) The primary response was to set up shelter systems, temporary by nature, designed to alleviate the immediate need for a place to sleep. (44) Faced with limited finances, state and local governments often looked to existing resources such as former schools and hospitals to temporarily address the growing needs of the homeless. (45)

      2. The Role of the Federal Government in Homelessness Policy

         In 1987, recognizing the importance of federal assistance in addressing the unprecedented and unrelenting levels of homelessness, (46) Congress passed the first major legislation directly addressing homelessness. (47) The Stewart B. McKinney Homeless Assistance Act, renamed the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act, (48) created an avenue for the federal government to coordinate the allocation of public resources and to provide funding for a number of homeless assistance programs. (49) The Act authorized a spectrum of programs covering a variety of homeless services including emergency shelter, transitional housing, job training, primary heath care, education, and permanent housing. (50) The Act also established the Interagency Council on Homelessness, a council within the executive branch intended to provide federal leadership for activities to assist the homeless. (51)

         Congressional appropriations for McKinney-Vento totaled $514.4 million in its first year, (52) and have grown to...