Hard-coded dates in your code makes errors related to dates easy to make and hard to find, even if you are good about commenting your code. Recently I re-organized how I track all the dates I use and I wanted to share that process here!

HUD Data Standards, looking at them too much (blurred) Thanks to HUD's changes to the reference numbers for each of the different "Living Situation" responses (like "Rental by client, no ongoing subsidy" and such), I recently created a really useful function that takes the reference number and …

I'm writing this to my homeless services colleagues who may be considering R. A basic understanding of what the Tidyverse is could help with focusing on where to begin learning about the data manipulation part of what we do. R is a language and environment actively maintained by contributors to the project and the R …

This is the Provider Dashboard of a Shiny app for which the code behind it is now free and open source. Based on Project Type, the infoboxes are different. See R minor here: https://ohiobalanceofstatecoc.shinyapps.io/Rminor/ About a year ago, I began rewriting all the custom reports I have spent the last decade …

If you take the most out-of-touch assumptions about non-profits and the most out-of-touch assumptions about "free and open source" software, you could easily assume the two have a natural affinity for the other. And only because all of this would be based on assumptions, you'd be wrong. They do fit together, …

In this post, I am going to offer up some sample data and the code I have come up with for comment and/or other ideas or maybe it will help others. If you aim to run my sample data and code, you will need R (free) and RStudio (the free and open source version is all you need!) installed on your computer. Some …

In my last post, I described the thought process behind moving our custom reporting out of our HMIS software. Since that posting, we have only become more convinced that, while it was a difficult decision, it is the best decision for our CoC's needs. The easy decision (for me) was what to switch to. For a number of …

In 2015, our CoC, like many many others, began to isolate data on veterans who were experiencing homelessness in order to ensure they were being prioritized and immediately referred to our veteran-specific programming. Our approach was based on the Criteria and Benchmarks for Achieving the Goal of Ending Veteran …

In our 80-county CoC, we only have 4 counties with any PATH Outreach projects. This leaves most of our CoC without any funded, intentional outreach services. When we first built our Vets list, we were adding unsheltered households to the list manually. For our Point in Time Count, our CoC staff was hand-tallying all …