Disclosure: This article is part of CSH’s Tech Corner series exploring technology trends and innovations in supportive housing. Mention of specific companies, products, or services is for informational purposes only and does not constitute an endorsement by CSH. CSH does not receive compensation from the organizations referenced in this article.
Connecting Systems to Improve Housing Stability
Communities across the country face a common challenge: systems designed to prevent homelessness often operate separately from those that respond to it, even when they serve the same people. This disconnect reduces their ability to be more cost-efficient and effective in helping the people they serve. An innovative partnership in Georgia is working to address this challenge head on.
The Georgia Department of Community Affairs (DCA) is leading an initiative CSH is supporting in part through its High Tech, High Touch Technology Innovation Awards grant that brings together the state’s homeless response infrastructure, healthcare data partners, and technology providers to create a more connected, proactive approach to housing stability.
The CSH award is also helping the partners expand that work by collaborating with the Georgia Health Information Network (GaHIN). Connecting housing and healthcare data could enable the initiative to significantly improve outcomes for people experiencing homelessness or housing instability.
This pilot establishes a secure, bidirectional data exchange between GaHIN’s GeorgiaUnify Social Care Integration Platform (SCIP) and Georgia’s Homeless Management Information System (GA HMIS, powered by ClientTrack). It will begin with a unidirectional flow of clinical and social care data from GeorgiaUnify into the HMIS caseworker workflow. The pilot scope is intentionally narrow: one or two Continuums of Care, a defined set of high-value clinical data elements, and a measurable set of caseworker decisions the integration is designed to improve.
The objective is twofold. First, give Georgia’s supportive housing caseworkers the clinical and social care context they need to coordinate care, accelerate placement, and prevent returns to homelessness. Second, generate evidence about whether and how integrated clinical context improves the decisions and outcomes that supportive housing depends on.
Building the Partnership and Defining the Data
According to project leaders, one of the most remarkable aspects of the initiative so far has been the level of cross-sector collaboration. As the Georgia HMIS Lead, DCA has worked closely with healthcare stakeholders, technology vendors, and local service providers to build a shared governance framework.
Project leaders say the partners have collaborated in ways not previously seen in the state’s homelessness response ecosystem. Rather than allowing technical complexity to hamper the work, they have focused on defining data needs, building trust, and ensuring that information sharing benefits both providers and clients.
The project team also learned the value of narrowing its focus. Although the original project proposal included working with multiple Continuums of Care across Georgia, leaders chose to begin with the Atlanta Continuum of Care and a select group of providers. This targeted approach allows the team to move quickly while building a framework that could eventually be replicated statewide.
The pilot is concentrating on a targeted set of healthcare-related data elements that could meaningfully improve housing outcomes without sharing sensitive clinical information. Planned data points include Medicaid status notifications that alert providers when someone has active coverage or may lose coverage within 30, 60, or 90 days. The project is also developing a “disabling condition indicator” that uses a proprietary algorithm to analyze healthcare data without sharing diagnoses or protected health information
Project leaders consistently emphasize that base technology is not the primary challenge. Building APIs and connecting systems are relatively straightforward. The more significant work involves creating bidirectional data sharing protocols that require governance, legal agreements, consent frameworks, and determining exactly what information will and will not be shared.
One strategy that helped move those conversations forward was defining the boundaries of data sharing from the outset. Partners began by identifying the information they would not exchange, which helped establish trust and clarify privacy expectations. By focusing on the minimum data necessary and maintaining strict privacy protections, the team has been able to advance discussions about legal and compliance requirements while creating a framework for responsible data sharing.
Next Steps
As the pilot moves forward, the partners will measure success through indicators such as faster placement into supportive housing, reduced loss of Medicaid coverage, improved efficiency for case managers, financial savings, and feedback from frontline workers.
The team is also designing Atlanta’s governance structures, legal agreements, data-sharing frameworks, and technical integrations with future expansion in mind. Once that foundation is established, additional Georgia Continuums of Care could join the network with relatively little additional technical effort.
At its core, this initiative is about more than technology. By giving providers better information at the right time, it can help case managers intervene earlier, help households maintain stability, reduce the time people spend unsheltered, and strengthen connections between housing and healthcare systems. As the work progresses, it could offer a model for how homelessness prevention, healthcare, and housing systems collaborate nationwide.
