San Luis Obispo County is taking a step to address homelessness with a new data collection system.
At their Tuesday meeting, the SLO County Board of Supervisors approved $3.4 million for a new software system to manage information about homelessness. The vote was unanimous, with supervisor John Peschong absent.
The new database will gather data from various agencies to monitor the progress of unhoused individuals throughout the county.
Joe Dzvonik, the SLO County Homeless Services Manager, said the new system is unlike anything the county has ever seen.
“The capability expansion shown here is nothing short of revolutionary, and it brings our county to the leading edge of homeless information management capabilities,” Dzvonik said.
Dzvonik hopes this will help the County understand the underlying causes of homelessness and seek effective solutions.
“A proper data system with analytic capability can help us understand questions, like, ‘what are the interventions we need for our specific communities here in SLO County to address the root causes of homelessness?” Dzvonik said.
Upgrades to the homeless management information system are part of the County’s five-year plan to cut homelessness in half by 2027.
Several stakeholders at the meeting discussed the flaws in the current system, calling it inefficient.
Janna Nichols is the Executive Director of the 5Cities Homeless Coalition. She said right now, service providers have to enter the same information into four different databases.
“It is clearly taking away time that we could be doing far more productive work,” Nichols said.
The new system will support 16 agencies, a step up from the system’s current 5; it will allow agencies to easily view each other’s data and communicate more effectively.
Supervisors at the meeting acknowledged it’s an expensive endeavor, but said the long term benefits will outweigh the costs.
“It's critical for us to be able to show to the public– show to the taxpayer– what exactly we're doing out there and also why it's happening in the first place.” District 3 Supervisor Dawn Ortiz-Legg said.
For more on the County’s homeless response plan, you can visit slocounty.ca.gov.
