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The One Metric you Need to Measure

If you want to see whether you’re making an impact on ending homelessness, there’s only one metric you should care about.  It’s not how many people use your services.  It’s not even if people are getting housed. It’s whether they’re staying housed.  

You need to measure something called Return to Homelessness (RTH).

Your RTH rate will show you if people are staying housed, or if they’re cycling in and out of homelessness.

In every community we’ve worked with, the Return to Homelessness rate has gone down. Monterey and San Benito Counties experienced the following reduction:



How can CTA’s technology address an issue as big and complex as homelessness? Before you can understand the impact of data integration, you first have to see how damaging data silos are.


Imagine the following:

You work in a medical clinic.  A young mother comes in for help. But your agency doesn’t integrate data with other agencies,  so you can’t see the entire picture. You can only see what’s right in front of you- that this woman needs help for her baby. Because you’re working in a data silo, you can’t see that this woman also recently lost her job, qualifies for food stamps and urgently needs counseling for domestic violence.   

If you could only see the whole picture, you would also know that this young mom qualifies for a lot of support services. In other words, if you weren’t limited by data silos, you’d be able to tap into a bigger network and refer this mom to nearby agencies that offer things like counseling, job training, or subsidized child care.    

By integrating data, CTA is creating a world where any caseworker can instantly connect people to the services they need when they need them. Even if these services are from different agencies.

Our technology is opening up access between agencies. Now caseworkers can see what services their clients are qualified for, and refer them to the support services that help prevent or end homelessness.  


Integrating Data is essential to ending homelessness.

Contact us today  Learn more about Data for Social Good.