Housing Status: Incorrectly displaying as "Unknown"
Known bug that happens a LOT! Clients show up as “Unknown” housing status even when there is data that should give them a different status! More detail in the comments.
We have also found another pattern with future dated housing history records. In most situations in our system, if there is a future dated housing history record, there is also a current one that reflects the correct status. However, once the start date of the future dated record passes, the housing status becomes incorrect.
I believe there are 2 ways to fix this, either recalculate and update the housing status every day for clients with an open housing history record or active admission (which could also fix some of the issues with Chronicity calculation documented in ticket no 14885 / 14885: Chronic Homelessness mismatch), or to not allow future dated housing history records.
This is not the only situation where this mismatch happens, but I wonder if the idea of recalculating housing status for clients with an open housing history or active admission every night could solve this for most situations, and avoid the need for our staff to monitor for this situation and do the “edit and save” workaround which fixes the status.
We have v60.3 in production and still seeing this issue. We have a quality report that shows us clients with "Unknown" housing status and an open record in either Shelter or Housing History, and are still seeing clients coming up. Same workaround can be applied, edit and save the record and the housing status will update accordingly.
There is a workaround that allows you to correct the “unknown” status when this happens. If you edit the open housing history or stay record which should be the client’s actual status, you can save it without making any changes, and the status will be updated correctly to reflect the “edited” record.
One known cause is clients that have overlapping Housing History and Stay records. If the most recent record is closed, then the client is likely to have an Unknown Housing Status even if there is another, older, record.
Admittedly this is a data quality problem, but with lacking data cleanup tools, it’s a common problem.
A client stays in a shelter past the housing inactivity threshold, and their housing status gets converted to “unknown housing”status despite still being in shelter?
That’s my guess anyways— it seems there are clients staying in our community that show up as “homeless”,and also clients showing up as “unknown” in the same shelter and my guess is the length of the stay triggering it but was curious to know if anyone else experienced this! :)
All these “unknowns “ have no end date , and they seem to be booked in longer than the threshold so I’m thinking perhaps if a client stays longer than the housing activity allows, it auto sets to unknown
We have also found another pattern with future dated housing history records. In most situations in our system, if there is a future dated housing history record, there is also a current one that reflects the correct status. However, once the start date of the future dated record passes, the housing status becomes incorrect.
I believe there are 2 ways to fix this, either recalculate and update the housing status every day for clients with an open housing history record or active admission (which could also fix some of the issues with Chronicity calculation documented in ticket no 14885 / 14885: Chronic Homelessness mismatch), or to not allow future dated housing history records.
This is not the only situation where this mismatch happens, but I wonder if the idea of recalculating housing status for clients with an open housing history or active admission every night could solve this for most situations, and avoid the need for our staff to monitor for this situation and do the “edit and save” workaround which fixes the status.
We have v60.3 in production and still seeing this issue. We have a quality report that shows us clients with "Unknown" housing status and an open record in either Shelter or Housing History, and are still seeing clients coming up. Same workaround can be applied, edit and save the record and the housing status will update accordingly.
Fixed in 4.0.60 (theoretically)
This one might be fixed in 60, I don't see any clients with open shelter stays or housing history that are showing Unknown in our QA (4.0.60.2.1)
There is a workaround that allows you to correct the “unknown” status when this happens. If you edit the open housing history or stay record which should be the client’s actual status, you can save it without making any changes, and the status will be updated correctly to reflect the “edited” record.
One known cause is clients that have overlapping Housing History and Stay records. If the most recent record is closed, then the client is likely to have an Unknown Housing Status even if there is another, older, record.
Admittedly this is a data quality problem, but with lacking data cleanup tools, it’s a common problem.
One theory:
A client stays in a shelter past the housing inactivity threshold, and their housing status gets converted to “unknown housing”status despite still being in shelter?
That’s my guess anyways— it seems there are clients staying in our community that show up as “homeless”,and also clients showing up as “unknown” in the same shelter and my guess is the length of the stay triggering it but was curious to know if anyone else experienced this! :)
All these “unknowns “ have no end date , and they seem to be booked in longer than the threshold so I’m thinking perhaps if a client stays longer than the housing activity allows, it auto sets to unknown