Each year, Allegheny County participates in a national census, required by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), of the number of people experiencing homelessness on a single night. The Point-in-Time count enumerates people experiencing homelessness in the County who are sheltered (residing in emergency shelters), unsheltered (residing in places not meant for human habitation) or participating in a short-term, supportive housing program (transitional and safe haven).

While the Point-in-Time count allows for annual comparisons, DHS also maintains a real-time dashboard that tracks the daily number of people in emergency shelters and a weekly count of people known to be experiencing unsheltered homelessness based on their engagement with street outreach teams. 

What are the key takeaways from the 2024 count?

• On January 30, 2024, in Allegheny County, 1,026 individuals were staying in emergency shelters or experiencing unsheltered homelessness (compared to 913 in 2023).  
  • 857 were staying in emergency shelters (84% of overall count)  
  • 169 were unsheltered (16% of overall count)  
• An increase in the number of individuals staying in emergency shelter (+99) is largely responsible for the increase in the number of people experiencing homelessness in the 2024 count. 
• The number of individuals experiencing unsheltered homelessness increased (+14) since 2023, but the percent increase of 8% is smaller than the year-over-year increases in 2022 and 2023, which were 62% and 48%, respectively. 
• Adult-only households differ from adult-child households both demographically and in how they access and use shelter, which is why we look at these populations separately in this year’s brief. 
• Among individuals in adult-only households (n=702): 
  • The majority (76%) were staying in shelters. 
  • Men were overrepresented in both sheltered (64%) and unsheltered (66%) locations. 
  • White adults were more likely to be unsheltered (57%) than adults of other races, but Black adults were overrepresented in shelters and in unsheltered locations, as Black individuals make up only 14% of the County’s population. 
  • The unsheltered adult population skewed slightly younger than those who were in shelter; a third of sheltered adults were 55+ (vs. 13% of those unsheltered). 
  • Veterans made up a small percentage of both the sheltered (7%) and unsheltered (5%) populations.  
  • There were 30 adult survivors of domestic violence in shelter (6%); in surveys, an additional three unsheltered individuals mentioned intimate partner violence as a factor leading to their homelessness. 
• Among the 324 individuals in adult-child households, all of whom were staying in shelter: 
  • Women/girls were overrepresented (61%), skewed by female-headed households. 
  • Black individuals were significantly overrepresented, at nearly 70% of those in family shelters. 
  • There were 93 unique households and they tended to be younger families; most adults were under 45 and 60% of the family shelter population was under 18. 
  • Almost a quarter of adults staying in family shelter were survivors of intimate partner violence.

How are these reports used?

The data collected during the yearly Point-in-time is submitted to HUD, to create a yearly homelessness assessment report presented to congress. For more information, visit the HUD website on the Point-in-Time Count, linked here.

Allegheny County uses the yearly data as a component of its work to understand trends and needs, informing the County’s strategies to reduce homelessness and better serve those experiencing it.

Previous Reports in this series

• 2023 Point-in-time Brief
• 2022 Point-in-time Brief
• 2020 Point-in-time Brief
• 2019 Point-in-time Brief
• 2018 Point-in-time Brief
• 2017 Point-in-time Brief
• 2016 Point-in-time Brief
• 2010-2014 Point-in-time Brief

DHS has set five goals to guide us and our partners in serving our community well. We aim for our network for human services to improve access to care, prevent overuse of coercive services, prevent harm, increase economic security and ensure quality.

What is this report about?

DHS can reach our goals more quickly if we devote time and attention to several big, bold initiatives that will make our systems and our organization work better for everyone we serve. This document outlines our key initiatives in 2024—which are in addition to our core work of running effective systems of care for people.

County human services includes programs from over 300 community-based agencies and is delivered by social workers, peers, and outreach staff working all throughout the county. These staff run out-of-school-time programs, answer hotlines, investigate reports of potential harm to children and vulnerable adults, deliver meals to seniors and run Senior Centers, make home visits to families with newborns, and do the administrative work that makes our human services run efficiently.

What is this report about?

This report highlights the 2023 accomplishments that stood out. There are many, many other achievements that people told us about. We chose the ones that made the biggest difference.

What is this dashboard about?

Allegheny County DHS sends text messages to county residents for a variety of reasons, including increasing awareness of services, providing timely reminders, and gathering feedback after a service experience.  In addition, DHS uses this information to help evaluate and monitor programs it delivers.  This dashboard displays information about these outreach and engagement efforts, including the subject and purpose of these and the rates of engagement.  Data on DHS’s texting efforts are available from November 2017 to the present.

What data is available?

The dashboard allows users to examine DHS text messaging as a whole as well as drill down to individual text campaigns.  It allows users to understand the purpose of each campaign, the number of messages sent and the demographics of the people being contacted by each campaign.  DHS collects this information through Community Connect Labs (CCL), DHS’s texting software, and information is updated daily. Click here for a more detailed report on DHS’s texting outreach from 2018-2022.

In Allegheny County, a network of shelters provides temporary places to stay for people experiencing homelessness. Allegheny County’s emergency shelter network includes facilities that serve only adults and others that offer spaces to families with children or other dependents (family shelters).

What is this report about?

This data brief focuses on the group of approximately 598 people in 184 households that enrolled in one of six family shelters at least once from April 2022 through March 2023. People are eligible for family shelters if they are 1) an adult with a minor child(ren) or a child over 18 years old still enrolled in high school, 2) a woman or couple without a minor child where the woman is in her third trimester of pregnancy, or 3) a couple unable to separate or parent with an adult child where one is caregiving for the other.

See the related data briefs, “People Using Adult-Only Emergency Shelters in Allegheny County” and “People Experiencing Unsheltered Homelessness in Allegheny County” for descriptions of other people served in the homeless system

What are the takeaways?

• Ninety percent (N=165) of heads of household who used family shelters were female and Black individuals were over-represented – 77% of heads of households were Black, but Black individuals only make up 14% of the county. Most households (71%) consisted of an adult female head of household and one or more children. Forty-nine percent of children (N=179) were age 5 or younger at the time they entered a family shelter. An additional 35% were ages 6 through 12 and 16% were ages 13 through 17.
• Most families had not recently used the shelter system and only stayed once. 84% of families only used shelter once during this period and only 6% had used a shelter or County housing program in the year prior to their first stay.
• Although half of families stayed in shelter for more than two months, the largest group of families exited within a week of entering. Seventy-nine percent (N=153) of all stays resulted in households exiting to stable housing, which includes a County housing program (32%), housing with family or friends (27%), or an owned or rented property (19%). An additional 19% exited to another shelter.
• Income is limited for heads of household using family shelters. 70% (N=129) of heads of household self-reported income from any source, with an average monthly income of $923. Additionally, DHS was able to access Pennsylvania Labor and Industry information for 171 individuals in this cohort (93%). Of these heads of household, 47% (N=81) had earnings, with an average monthly income of $1,243.
• About a third of Medicaid-enrolled heads of household used behavioral health services, most of which were mental health outpatient services. The most common diagnosis was acute stress disorder (30% of people with a diagnosis), a short-term mental health condition that can occur within the first months after experiencing a traumatic event.
• Asthma was the most common chronic condition for Medicaid-enrolled children using shelter and the second most common for heads of household. Asthma rates for both are twice as high as those in the general Medicaid-enrolled population in the County
• Fifteen percent of families using these shelters had an active child welfare case in the year prior to their stay. This could indicate the need for additional support and safety nets within the child welfare system or as families transition out of it.

How is this report being used? 

Emergency shelters are meant to be short-term accommodations for people experiencing a crisis. The County’s goal is to ensure that shelter stays are rare, brief and non-recurring.  The County is working with shelter staff and other housing providers to support client moves to stable housing when possible, with the goal of improving their overall outcomes and ensuring that short-term beds are available when people need them. 

Allegheny County Department of Human Services (DHS) believes that appropriate sharing of client information is essential to the provision, continuity and overall quality of care provided to DHS clients. It has created a number of tools and mechanisms to facilitate this sharing, including the creation of tools for contracted providers to access information on clients they are serving and mechanisms for providers to safely and security share client information back with DHS. Read more about this here and access the tools through the below links.

Where can I access provider tools?

Links to clientivew, a tool for individual care coordination, and provider connect, a tool for to support provider decision-making, are found here. You can also access data exchange, one of the tools that providers can use to securely share information back with DHS.

How I can gain access to these tools if I don’t already have it?

If you are a contracted provider with DHS, you can request access to provider tools through DHS’s application support portal.

What is the Allegheny County Data Warehouse?

The Allegheny County Data Warehouse brings together and integrates client and service data from a wide variety of sources both internal and external to the County.

How was the Data Warehouse developed?

The Data Warehouse was created by consolidating publicly-funded human services data (e.g., behavioral health, child welfare, developmental supports, homelessness and aging) and, over time, expanded to include data from other sources. The Data Warehouse was made possible with support from the Human Service Integration Fund, a flexible funding pool created by a coalition of local foundations for the purpose of supporting integration and innovation within DHS.

How does the Data Warehouse support of the work of Allegheny County?

The Data Warehouse was designed primarily to improve services to clients, but also to improve the ability of workers to perform their jobs and to support management decisionmaking; it is also intended to be available as a community resource, making data and information publicly available whenever possible.

Where can I learn more?

• This overview document describes the development of the Data Warehouse, the County’s data sharing partnerships, and how the data is utilized to support client services and decisionmaking. 

• The Data Warehouse has also been covered extensively by the media and other researchers:
  • Better Government Through Data: Using Allegheny County Data Warehouse to design more effective results for clients and the public
  Institute for Excellence in Government, Harvard University, October 2020
• • How Data Powers Help for Families
    PostIndustrial.Com, January 27, 2021
  • Software for the Social Good: One County’s Model Warehouse
    Government Technology, December 1, 2017
  • How Allegheny County’s Data Warehouse is improving human services through integrated data
    GovInnovator podcast, February 17, 2016
  • Data Warehouses: Using New Technology to Improve Human Services Administration
    Re-Issue of June 11, 2014 article below
    Government Technology, June 12, 2014
  • Allegheny County, Pennsylvania: Department of Human Services’ Data Warehouse
    Data-Smart City Solutions, Harvard University, June 11, 2014
  • Gaining Ground: A Guide to Facilitating Technology Innovation in Human Services
    Data-Smart City Solutions, Harvard University, May 28, 2014
  • Allegheny County’s Data Warehouse: Leveraging Data to Enhance Human Service Programs and Policies
    University of Pennsylvania, May 2014
  • Human Services: Sustained and Coordinated Efforts Could Facilitate Data-Sharing While Protecting Privacy
    U.S. Government Accountability Office, February 2013

What is the DHS case competition?

Each year, the Allegheny County Department of Human Services (DHS) hosts a competition for local graduate students that challenges interdisciplinary teams to solve a problem in local government.

What information is available?

Yearly reports, below, describe the case topic and students’ proposed solutions. A short video explains the event.

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All reports

In its responsibility for administering publicly-funded human services, Allegheny County Department of Human Services (DHS) plans for the allocation of more than $1B in areas that span behavioral health, children and families, aging, housing and homelessness, and intellectual disability and autism services.

How does DHS plan its allocation of resources?

DHS planning activities are ongoing and iterative. They include:

• Engaging stakeholders through
  • Annual public hearings
  • Public surveys via Allegheny Engage
  • Regular advisory board and committee meetings
• Targeted outreach to clients, providers, and other stakeholders on specific questions/priorities (e.g., Crisis Response Stakeholder Group, etc.
• Analyzing client data to identify gaps, and to compare our current state against expected outcomes
• Consulting experts, best practice literature, research

What is the County Human Services Plan?

The County Human Services Plan consolidates planning requirements for categorical components of the Human Services Block Grant, including Mental Health Community Base-Funded Services, Behavioral Health Services Initiative (BHSI), Intellectual Disabilities Community Base-Funded Services, Act 152 of 1988 Drug and Alcohol Services, Homeless Assistance Program Funding, and Human Services Development Funds. It is submitted annually to the PA Department of Human Services, 60 days after the agency releases its annual bulletin (usually in the summer).

What is the Needs-Based Plan and Budget?

The Needs-Based Plan and Budget articulates Allegheny County’s priorities, planned services, and resource needs for serving children and families – in particular those children and families who are involved with, or at risk of involvement with, the child welfare and juvenile justice systems. It is submitted annually to the PA Department of Human Services, Office of Children, Youth & Families (the budget narrative submission deadline is August 15^th every year).

State Fiscal Year (SFY) 2025-26

• Plan
• Summary

Older plans:

• SFY 2024-25
  • Summary
  • Hearing Video
• SFY 2023-24
• SFY 2022-23
• SFY 2021-22
• SFY 2020-21
• SFY 2019-20

What is the Area Agency on Aging Strategic Plan?

The Allegheny County Area Agency on Aging (AAA) is part of a nationwide aging network led by the U.S. Administration on Community Living and the Pennsylvania Department on Aging (PDA). Every four years, PDA requires each of the Commonwealth’s fifty-two (52) Area Agencies on Aging to submit an action plan for the following four years. This Four-Year Plan considers the demographic trends of the region, the changing needs of the consumers, and the current services provided by the Allegheny County AAA.

Additionally, every year the Allegheny County AAA releases Program Updates and a Budget Prospectus, as well as an Annual Report.

• SFY 2022-23 Report
• SFY 2022-23 Budget Prospectus
• 2020-2024 Four Year Plan
• SFY 2021-22 Budget Prospectus
• 2016-2020 Four Year Plan

Community Services Needs Assessment & Strategic Plan

Allegheny County DHS is the designated community action agency for the receipt of the County’s (outside the City of Pittsburgh) Community Services Block Grant (CSBG) funds. CSBG is a federally funded block grant from the US Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children & Families, Office of Community Services that supports services aiming to alleviate the causes and conditions of poverty in under resourced communities. CSBG recipients are required to conduct a needs assessment and develop a strategic plan no less than every 5 years.  

• 2022 Report
• 2021 Strategic Plan for Community Action
• 2021 Community Needs Assessment: Economic Security

Housing and Homelessness

Allegheny County DHS, through its Office of Community Services, is the designated Infrastructure Organization and United Funding Agency for the Allegheny County Continuum of Care (CoC) – the network of services and stakeholders engaged in making homelessness rare, brief and non-recurring. Starting in 2016, the CoC underwent a community planning process to create its strategic plan. The strategic planning process is summarized in Preventing and Ending Homelessness – Community Strategic Planning Process. Principles guiding the strategic plan can be found in the Guiding Principles: Allegheny County Plan to Prevent & End Homelessness. The working board of the CoC, the Homeless Advisory Board (HAB), voted to accept the plan on July 25, 2017.

• Allegheny County Strategic Plan to Prevent and End Homelessness

Opioid Settlement Funding

• 2024 Annual Report on Opioid Settlement

• Opioid Settlement Plan

Other plans

• Community Violence Reduction Plan
• COVID-19 Response Plan
• 2019-20 Strategic Initiatives and Final Report
• Latino Community Center Strategic Plan

The Allegheny County Department of Human Services (DHS) conducted a study of the involuntary hospitalization program in the county. Involuntary hospitalizations occur when an individual undergoing a psychiatric episode is deemed to be a clear and present danger to themselves or others.  The specific section that governs the intake process of an individual is Section 302 of the Mental Health Procedures Act (MHPA), and for that reason the entire program is sometimes called the 302 program.

Evaluations occur in a hospital setting. Following an upheld commitment individuals can initially be detained for up to 120 hours, with the potential for extensions. The county seeks to understand the system in detail and improve outcomes among individuals who go through this process.

What is this report about?

This report describes individuals who went through the involuntary hospitalization program from 2015-2022. The analysis profiles the individuals including their characteristics such as diagnosis, their usage of mental and behavioral health services, and their outcomes post release. 

What are the takeaways?

• Involuntary hospitalizations are common, affecting over 3,700 residents each year. The most common source of referrals occur from friend / family (43%), police officers (19%), and physicians (14%).
• Individuals who are involuntarily hospitalized have poor outcomes upon release—within 5 years of their first evaluation, fully 20% of the population has died, a rate that is higher than that for clients exiting jail, enrolling in homeless shelters, or receiving food assistance (SNAP) as well as the rate for individuals with severe mental illness (SMI) diagnoses.
• We find worse outcomes among 302 individuals with a pre-existing substance use disorder (SUD)— 5% of those with SUD 18–50 years of age die within two years of intake, compared to 2.5% of the 18–50-year-olds without SUD. Of those with SUD, eighty percent (60%) of the mortality rate is attributable to drug overdose.
• We found similarly elevated risks for other adverse outcomes. Over 23% were charged with a crime within 5 years of release, and 60% used an emergency department (ED) within one year of release.
• Statistical methods can distinguish between riskier and less risky clients with high fidelity at the moment of the 302 evaluation.
• Those petitioned for involuntary commitment were disproportionately Black, although petition-upheld rates are similar across race. A similar picture emerges for gender—men were more likely to be petitioned, but upheld rates at the point of exam were similar for men and women.

How is this report being used?

The report serves as an initial analysis into the involuntary hospitalization process. The county is using this analysis, as well as planned subsequent ones that look at the impact of an involuntary hospitalization on a person’s outcomes, and input from clinicians and community members to develop recommendations to improve care for this vulnerable population. Ultimately the county is looking to improve both the process and the outcomes for individuals who experience an involuntary hospitalization.

What is Hello Baby?

New information added September 2023

Hello Baby is designed for parents of new babies in Allegheny County to strengthen families, improve children’s outcomes, and maximize child and family well-being, safety and security. Hello Baby’s tiered prevention model offers a variety of supports designed to meet families’ varied needs and interests through the child’s third year.

How was Hello Baby developed?

Allegheny County Department of Human Services (DHS) undertook an extensive process to develop the Hello Baby prevention strategy. In addition to drawing from decades of experience by DHS leadership, service workers and families, the process included:

• A review of data and best practices identified in the literature
• Dozens of individual and group meetings with local service providers, families in the community, social workers, clinical specialists and local, national and international child development experts
• Two independent, comprehensive reviews by experts in the field

How is Hello Baby being used?

The resulting prevention program has a differentiated approach, with flexible service delivery that is based upon the understanding that each family is unique and has different and varying levels of needs and barriers to support. In addition to self- and community-referral pathways, Hello Baby also uses an innovative and predictive risk model (PRM) that uses integrated data to identify the highest need families eligible for services. Hello Baby includes a universal entry point designed to increase awareness of available support services for all new parents and improve overall engagement rates. It incorporates community level support and proven home visiting techniques, hiring culturally competent staff with lived experiences to support families with moderate to high needs and intensive engagement and service coordination to support families with the highest needs. An evaluation partner has already been selected to ensure that Hello Baby benefits from rapid feedback and learning throughout the implementation.

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Related materials

• Development of the Hello Baby program
  • FAQs about Hello Baby
  • Children’s Bureau grant application
  • Overview of community engagement efforts
  • Case review summary of high-risk families
  • Request for Proposals: Intensive Engagement and Case Management Service for High-Need Families of Newborns
  • Response to RFP from Healthy Start, Inc.
• Analytics in support of the Hello Baby program
  • Implementing the Hello Baby Prevention Program in Allegheny County: Methodology Report by Rhema Vaithianathan, Ph.D. (Auckland University of Technology), Emily Putnam-Hornstein, Ph.D. (University of North Carolina), and Diana-Benavides Prado, Ph.D (Auckland University of Technology)
  • Answers for parents about the predictive risk model: a guide for staff

• Ethical reviews and DHS’s response
  • Ethical review of the development and implementation of the Hello Baby program by Deborah Daro, Ph.D.
  • Ethical review of the predictive risk model use in the Hello Baby program by Michael Veale, Ph.D.
    Note: This report was written in early 2019. Since then, DHS has made several changes to the design and implementation of the Hello Baby program. An updated draft of the report will be posted when available.
  • DHS’s response to the ethical reviews
• Independent research and evaluation in support of Hello Baby
  • Request for Proposals: Process and Outcome Evaluation of Hello Baby, a Tiered Intervention Program for New Parents and Their Babies
  • Response to the RFP from The Urban Institute and Chapin Hall
  • Do Family Support Centers Reduce Maltreatment Investigations? Evidence from Allegheny County by Fred Wulczyn, Ph.D., and Bridgette Lery, Ph.D. (Chapin Hall)
• DHS policy and procedures related to Hello Baby
  • Collaboration between Hello Baby and Child Welfare
  • Hello Baby involvement for families involved with Child Welfare
  • Use and access of the Hello Baby score

For more information about Hello Baby and to access resources for new parents, visit Hello Baby online.

Recent press coverage of Hello Baby is available here.

In 2022, staff at the Urban Institute partnered with the Allegheny County DHS and the Western Pennsylvania Regional Data Center (WPRDC) to pilot synthetic data generation at the local level, to help understand the unique challenges that might face state and local governments in generating synthetic data. Each record in the synthetic dataset represents a simulated individual, or record, who received at least one service from the Allegheny County DHS in 2021. The synthetic data were designed such that records aggregated by service represent the original data. Read more here about synthetic data.

Why create a synthetic dataset?

The Department of Human Services (DHS) in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, serves one in five residents of the county every year through child welfare services, behavioral health services, aging services, developmental support services, homeless and housing supports, and family strengthening and youth supports. In the process, data are collected about these services and the population using them. These data are integrated at the individual level to allow for better care coordination, operational improvements, and program evaluation. Because of the dataset’s sensitive nature, it cannot be widely shared at an individual level, so synthetic data are used in the real dataset’s place—allowing the data to be publicly shared and helping stakeholders, including researchers, service providers, and members of the public, understand these populations better.

The Allegheny County Department of Human Services (DHS) engages clients and others who interact with DHS programs in a variety of ways: regular roundtables/cabinets (e.g., Children’s Cabinet); town halls and community forums; social media (e.g., Facebook and LinkedIn); and the Director’s Action Line (DAL). In 2018, DHS expanded its public engagement strategy to include SMS text messaging (texting), a tool that is convenient for recipients and allows DHS to scale up communication with clients and other Allegheny County residents.

What is this report about?

This data brief describes DHS’s texting outreach from 2018 to 2022.  This brief outlines the different distribution paths and mechanisms that DHS uses for text outreach, and characterizes the number and content of text messages sent, the demographics of the text recipients, and the impact of DHS’s text outreach thus far.

What are the takeaways?

• From 2018 through 2022, DHS sent 832,038 text messages to 151,707 phone numbers.  Over the same time period, DHS received 193,283 messages in response from 19,185 phone numbers.
• The content type of the text messages sent over this time period can be categorized as follows: program outreach (48%), data collection (44%), alerts (7%), and public policy updates (1%).
• The subject of the text messages sent over this time period are diverse, but a disproportionate share (72%) are about transportation, due to the extensive use of text messaging for outreach and data collection in relation to the Allegheny County Discounted Fares Pilot program.
• In 2021, 74% of text messages were related to one of the following initiatives: COVID-19 rental assistance, the Older Youth Pandemic Relief program, or information about free tax preparation services.
• In 2022, 88% of text messages were related to one of the following initiatives: the Allegheny County Discounted Fares program, the SNAP fresh access program, or recruitment and outreach for paid research opportunities with university partners.
• Text messaging has allowed DHS to connect clients to resources at scale, and to elicit feedback from clients who would likely never otherwise have the time or opportunity to share their feedback.  Examples of this described in the brief include text outreach associated with the Older Youth Pandemic Relief program, and text message surveys sent to clients who use Family Center services.

How is this report being used?

The county is interested in innovative and effective ways to outreach and engage with clients.  We believe that text messaging is one way to do this at scale.  The county is using the information presented in this report to inform overall strategy about how we best engage and use client feedback information to improve programs and increase overall access to social services.

At the Allegheny County Department of Human Services (DHS), we work with more than 400 community organizations to keep children and older adults safe from abuse and neglect, connect them to effective mental health and substance use treatment, provide housing for those without shelter and more. As stewards of more than $1 billion in public funding, we constantly scrutinize the programs and services we fund to ensure that they are most effectively helping clients make measurable progress toward their goals. We pay close attention to the data, including client feedback and surveys, and use these data to determine when it’s in clients’ best interest to modify existing programs or launch new ones. Recently, we have been increasing our commitment to the use of randomized pilots to measure the effectiveness of various strategies and determine how to make the best use of available resources. In keeping with our values of transparency and the appropriate use of data for decision-making, we want to share our thinking behind the use of pilots as an effective tool to further the Department’s goals and values while improving client outcomes.

What are randomized pilots?

When we ask, Was this program effective?, We want to know if client outcomes are better for program participants when compared to the outcomes of others not involved in the program. There are various ways to make this comparison. For example, we can compare client status before and after the program or we can compare their outcomes to clients who chose to not participate in the program. The weakness of both of these approaches is their reliance on the assumption that the groups are similar, i.e., on average, they would have performed the same if neither had received the intervention. Thus, we are left wondering, “How can we distinguish the program impact from the effects of time or characteristics of the participants?” Randomized pilots solve this problem by breaking the link between characteristics that could drive differences between groups and the program itself. In a randomized pilot, participants are assigned to different programs or policies randomly, based on the equivalent of a coin flip. These methods are standard practice in medical and drug trials to measure the effectiveness of health interventions with confidence; in recent years, they have become more popular with governments entities, nonprofit organizations and businesses.

Why start with a pilot?

Many organizations have highlighted the value of randomization (see here and here for examples). Rather than rehash their points, we expand upon three DHS core values that are supported by the use of pilots.

• Accountability and Transparency: Too often, the performance of government-led initiatives or strategies are unclear, making it impossible to measure progress or demand accountability. Change, if it does occur, is not based on credible data nor connected to measurable outcomes. Without clear information, program continuation or termination may be based on subjective decisions that might be inaccurate. In contrast, DHS wants to be held accountable and to ensure that we are funding programs that measurably improve the outcomes of the clients who rely on us for critical support, services and resources. We seek to provide clear feedback to ourselves and our stakeholders, demonstrating either that our investments are producing their intended outcome(s) and that money is being spent effectively or that the program needs to be modified or even ended. Randomized pilots promote this accountability and transparency because they are simple to understand, analyze and report on.
• Betting boldly: Pilots allow us to bet on new, unproven or controversial solutions without committing to expensive or unproven investments that don’t produce results. By getting clear data on performance of new interventions, we can make informed decisions that are in the best interest of those we serve. At DHS, pilots will never be used to generate a known answer to a question or to withhold resources for an intervention clients would otherwise be entitled to receive (e.g., publicly funded childcare subsidies).
• Continuous improvement: Given the complexity and range of the problems we face—from the opioid epidemic to community violence—we need to use every tool at our disposal to make progress. In government, as in any endeavor, it is hard to improve without feedback. Pilots are a key part of a continuous quality improvement cycle that starts with asking whether programs are effective and how they could be better. They guard against poor decision-making by providing data on an initial investments before making longer term decisions about funding and large-scale program launches.

Pilot ethics

Earning and keeping clients’ trust is essential for our work. In line with our strategic initiatives, work on algorithms and funding decisions, we will continue to strive for transparency and community engagement as we develop pilots and report on their results and ultimate funding decisions. Our commitment to transparency and
protections for clients includes:

• Seeking participants’ informed consent for sharing data and voluntary participation in all pilots.
• Targeting studies to individuals and neighborhoods that can benefit from the solution.
• Compensating clients for completing surveys and other forms of participation.
• Protecting participants’ data—study data will always be reported only in aggregate form, protecting the individual identity of all participants.

When partnering with outside academics who propose to analyze and report on the implementation and outcomes of a pilot, they will be asked to submit their analysis plan to their institutions’ Institutional Review Board (IRB), thus minimizing the risk of unintended negative outcomes and ensuring informed consent. In any case, when we implement and analyze the results of a pilot to inform decisions about launching the program, we commit to publishing the results and decisions on our website. We welcome suggestions about potential interventions where a randomized pilot can increase our understanding of the specific intervention and of the kind of interventions community members are interested in testing (contact us at DHS-Research@alleghenycounty.us). Randomized pilots have the potential to increase our data-informed program decisions and improve the quality and relevance of program strategies; they will also challenge us to make the best use of our resources. We look forward to the challenge and hope you’ll join us as we expand this continuous quality improvement strategy. We’ll update this website as we begin new pilots and report on interim and final results.

This dashboard shows trends in the number of people experiencing sheltered and unsheltered homelessness.

What is this dashboard about?

This dashboard displays: 1) the number of people who were active in an emergency shelter program per night dating back to January 2022, as well as basic demographic information on race, gender, and age; and 2) the number of people known to be experiencing unsheltered homelessness based on their engagement with street outreach teams dating back to September 2021. 

What data is available?

Emergency shelter data comes from the Homeless Management Information System (HMIS) and is updated daily. Unsheltered homeless data is updated weekly. Before September 1, 2024 the data came from a document used to facilitate coordination between local street outreach teams; data after September 1, 2024 comes from HMIS, as teams have standardized and expanded data entry in HMIS. 

Those active in local domestic violence emergency shelters are not represented in this dashboard, as domestic violence emergency shelters do not report usage in HMIS. These shelters have the capacity to serve approximately 100 clients per day.