Partners: Zach Almquist and June Yang

SSEC Engineer: Anant Mittal

Graduate Student Leads: Ihsan Kahveci, Emily Porter

Undergraduate and Graduate Student Engineers: Arushi Agarwal, Hana Amos, Zack Crouse, Devanshi Desai, Elizabeth Deng, Kristen L. Gustafson, Finley Hutchison, Kaden Kapadia, Hannah Lam, Aryan Palave, KelliAnn Ramirez, Natalie Robbins, Hrudhai Umashankar, Jasmine Vuong, Ella Weinberg

Research Goals and Domain:

Researchers and policy-makers face significant challenges in accurately estimating the number of people experiencing homelessness and understanding their needs. Current approaches often rely on imprecise methods, such as a one-night visual census to count people living on the streets, including those sleeping in tents or on park benches. These methods are labor-intensive and provide only a partial picture, leading to systematic undercounts, limited insights into the population’s characteristics as well as circumstances, and misallocation of resources or advocacy.

To better understand and support people living without shelter, Dr. Zack Almquist, Associate Professor of Sociology, and his team are partnering with the King County Regional Homelessness Authority to develop a new way of counting and learning about this population. Traditional methods often miss many individuals, especially those living in tents, cars, or on park benches. To close this gap, the team is adapting a survey approach called Respondent-Driven Sampling (RDS), which spreads through word-of-mouth referrals within social networks of people experiencing homelessness. By following these peer connections, the survey reaches far deeper into unsheltered communities than standard counts, helping to paint a more comprehensive and accurate picture of both the number of people affected and their needs.

Software Problem:

The software needed for this type of survey is fairly advanced. It must track connections between people while also protecting privacy and ensuring that no one can be personally identified. At the same time, it should be practical for large non-profits and government agencies that are responsible for counting people living outside of the shelter system. Ideally, the system would be HIPAA-compliant, based on sound research methods, open-source, and easy to use—so that a wide variety of organizations and staff can rely on it with confidence.

Software Solution:

SSEC is building a system that supports the verification and generation of referral codes for RDS. It will also support the collection of surveys from respondents and assist researchers in running experiments and analyzing the resulting data. Once deployed, a volunteer will access the app on a mobile device. They will login, complete a survey with a respondent, submit the data, then print and give out QR code referrals. Admins can oversee volunteer activities, manage user access, and monitor regional survey distribution in real-time. Data is managed by cloud solutions that are HIPAA-compliant and enable further data integration with the Homeless Information Management System (HMIS). 

Impact:

Pilot testing will be in the field in October/November. More will be shared here as the project is completed.

Funding:

Partial support is provided by SSEC, the University of Washington Population Health Initiative (PHI) Tier 3 Grant and NSF CAREER Grant #SES-2142964.