BILL NUMBER: S8222

SPONSOR: SEPULVEDA
 
TITLE OF BILL:

An act to amend the social services law, in relation to directing the
department of social services to establish a centralized homelessness
crisis response data system

 
PURPOSE OR IDEA OF GENERAL BILL:

This bill intends to establish a centralized homelessness crisis
response data system through which state agencies, local governmental
entities, including law enforcement agencies, court systems, school
districts, and emergency service providers, and other relevant persons
are able to share and access information related to individuals which
experience chronic homelessness in order to connect or refer those indi-
viduals to critical state and local services.

 
SUMMARY OF SPECIFIC PROVISIONS:

              

Shall establish a centralized homelessness crisis response data system
Multiple State entities shall enter into a data sharing agreement as
necessary for the exchange of information related to chronic homeless-
ness System will collect, aggregate, analyze and share information
submitted to the centralized homelessness crisis response data system

 
JUSTIFICATION:

Preventing and combatting homelessness depends on a coordinated Contin-
uum of Care (CoC) on the ground locally, sharing information across
disparate systems, and collaborating with the public, nonprofit, philan-
thropic, and private sector partners. The systems that collect this
information today (i.e., homelessness services, electronic health
records, education, and criminal justice information systems) were
designed independently to address particular applications and are
managed by different entities with separate IT systems and governance.

The disparate nature of these systems limits a community's ability to
identify trends or emerging needs, measure internal performance goals,
and make data driven decisions about the effective deployment of limited
resources. With the shift in recent years to whole person care, there is
increasing demand to connect these disparate systems to affect better
outcomes.

New York State is home to approximately seventeen percent of the
nation's homeless population with over 91,000 individuals experiencing
homelessness, whether sheltered or crbsheltered, on any given night. Of
those individuals experiencing homelessness, eighty-five percent of them
are living in New York City. New York's homeless population is managed
across twenty-six Continuums of Care, most all with their own population
data, information management systems and points-of-contact.

Connecting New York's homelessness data across disparate systems in a
coordinated and fluid manner is critical to achieving an effective
deployment of resources in an effort to affect better outcomes for New
York's substantial homeless population. A centralized homelessness
crisis response data system represents a dynamic and agile means to
addressing one of New York State's longstanding social issues.
 
LEGISLATIVE HISTORY:

New Bill

 
EFFECTIVE DATE:  Immediately