How to Run the System Performance Measures Report

This article assists HMIS users in running, reviewing, saving/exporting, and printing the System Performance Measures (SPM's) as designed by HUD.

Updated: April 2025

 

System Performance Measure Basics

Measure 1: Length of Time Persons Experience Homelessness.

  • What's included: The number of clients served in Emergency Shelter and Transitional Housing projects along with their average and median length of time experiencing homelessness.
    • Measure 1a just includes actual entry and exit dates
    • Measure 1b adds in Permanent Housing (RRH and PSH) projects and the inferred time homeless from data entered in homeless history data elements.
  • Is it helpful to run for my agency: Yes! Lots of detail for length of stay at your agency only.

Measure 2: The Extent to which Persons Who Exit Homelessness to Permanent Housing Destinations Return to Homelessness within 6, 12, and 24 months.

  • What's included: This measure begins with clients who exited to a permanent housing destination two years prior. Of those clients, the measure reports on how many of them returned to homelessness for up to two years after their initial exit for Street Outreach, Emergency Shelter, Transitional Housing, and Permanent Housing (RRH and PSH) project types individually.
  • Is it helpful to run for my agency: Yes!! This can give you returns within your agency, it does limit results to repeat clients during the report dates. This will not tell you about community wide returns.

Measure 3: Number of Persons Experiencing Homelessness

  • What's included: The unduplicated counts of clients throughout the reporting period for Emergency Shelter and Transitional Housing project types individually and combined. 
  • Is it helpful to run for my agency: Yes, sure. Knowing the unduplicated counts of clients is great but other reports provide that too. 

Measure 4: Employment and Income Growth for Homeless Persons in CoC Program–funded Projects

  • What's included: The income changes for program stayers and leavers. The projects included are limited to CoC-funded Transitional Housing and Permanent Housing (RRH and PSH) projects, and only adult clients are included. 
  • Is it helpful to run for my agency: Yes, sure if your program is CoC funded, but all project types can run the APR or CAPER for a look at income too in Questions 16-19.

Measure 5: Number of Persons who Become Homeless for the First Time

  • What's included: It starts with the client’s earliest start date in any of the included project types during the report period. Working backwards in time, it determines if the client was active in any shelter or housing project within 24 months prior to their earliest start date. If not, then the client is considered newly homeless.
    • Measure 5.1 includes Emergency Shelter and Transitional Housing project types
    • Measure 5.2 adds in Permanent Housing (RRH and PSH) projects.
  • Is it helpful to run for my agency: Not really since it only looks at your agency. 

Measure 7: Successful Placement from Street Outreach and Successful Placement in or Retention of Permanent Housing

  • What's included: This measure is divided in three tables-
    • Metric 7a.1 – Counts leavers who exited Street Outreach to an acceptable destination.
    • Metric 7b.1 – Counts leavers who exited Emergency Shelter, Transitional Housing and Permanent Housing (RRH and PSH) projects to permanent housing destinations.
    • Metric 7b.2 – Counts stayers and leavers with a housing move-in date in all Permanent Housing projects except Rapid Rehousing and how many of those were stayers or leavers who exited to permanent housing destinations.
  • Is it helpful to run for my agency: Yes!!! Lots of detail for positive outcomes for your agency.

Data Quality Table:

  • What's included: Counts of total people served, leavers and leavers with an exit destination of Don’t Know, Refused, or Missing for Street Outreach, Emergency Shelter, Transitional Housing and Permanent Housing (RRH and PSH) project types individually. 
  • Is it helpful to run for my agency: Yes! Great to review those destinations for accuracy.

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Before Running the Run the Report
 

Determine which projects should be included in your reports using the information above.

  • If running for 1 project, select Enter Data As mode before going to the Reports menu.
  • If running for multiple projects, do not use Enter Data As mode. 
  •  

Running the Report

  1. Select Reports on the left hand menu to open the report dashboard.
  2. Under System Performance Measures, click on System Performance Measures
  3. Complete the report prompts.
    • Select the appropriate Measures you want to include in the report
    • Under the dropdown menu, click your CoC Code
    • Select the appropriate scope: System-wide or Project-focused
    • If you selected Project-focused scope select the appropriate provider type: Provider or Reporting Group
    • If you selected Project-focused scope search for and select the appropriate provider or reporting group by clicking the plus sign in the window that pops up when you click the search button
    • Next to Program Date Range*, enter the first and last day of the reporting period (Recommended to use one full year). Do not add one day to the end of the reporting period. 
    • Select the appropriate Entry/Exit Types*
  4. Click Build Report
  5. Refer to "Report Run History" section at the top of the screen for completed report.
    • Click Refresh to monitor the status of report. 
    • Click Magnifying Glass to open report once Report Status column shows "Complete" 

Reviewing the Report

Review each table of the report for completeness and accuracy. Each of the blue numbers in the report can be clicked on to show the list of clients in the category. Make sure to pay special attention to the following tables and items:

  • Measure 2a and 2b -Number Returning to Homelessness in Less than 6 Months.
  • Measures 7a.1, 7b.1 and 7b.2 - Change in exits to permanent housing destinations.
  • Data Quality Table: Confirm the total numbers appear accurate for your project and check destination errors. 

These measures may highlight data quality issues for you.  Make any appropriate changes in the client record and rerun the report to confirm that the data has been corrected. This report is "live" and does not require an overnight refresh.

 

Saving or Exporting the Report

  1. Scroll up to the Report Options section at the top of the page and click Download.
  2. Save the .zip file to your computer.
  • If you would like a PDF version, you can Print to PDF at this time. If you have difficulties printing, you will need to contact your own internal technical support. 

SPECIAL NOTE FOR USERS WITH APPLE (MAC) COMPUTERS: you cannot use the Safari web browser to download the official .csv zipfile!

 

Creating a Printable SPM report from HMIS

Exported data is difficult to read. To save a printable version to save or share the SPM results, follow these steps after reviewing the data.

  1. Print the document using the printer icon at the top or the keyboard shortcut CRTL + P (the shortcut may vary by computer).
    • If you would like a PDF version, you can save to PDF at this time. If you have difficulties printing, you will need to contact your agency's internal technical support. 

 

SPECIAL NOTE FOR USERS: you do not submit the official SPM reports to HUD, the CoC will do that for the whole community!

 

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Nicole Purdy -
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