In HMIS, a household is defined as a single person or a group of people who apply together for assistance and share (or intend to share) a housing unit. Households are used to link client records so that enrollments, services, and reporting accurately reflect family or group composition.
This is especially important for programs where eligibility and reporting depend on household composition being documented accurately in enrollments, such as Emergency Shelter, Rapid Re-Housing (RRH), and Permanent Supportive Housing (PSH). Every household must have one Head of Household (HoH), and each member’s relationship to the HoH must be recorded.
With the Global Visibility rollout, household relationships for unlocked client records are shared across agencies. This improves coordination but requires careful data entry and privacy awareness. If a client selects No Sharing, do not add them to a household in HMIS.
- Households must be established before a new enrollment is created
- Clients can have many different iterations of their household at any time, and at the same time, they may be working with different providers. Therefore, it is important that users do not delete households or remove household members from existing households.
- Deleting households or removing household members from existing households breaks the link of clients within an enrollment they may have. Although the members may not be present for your agency, this may cause data errors for a different provider.
- Users may create a new household or add new members to an existing household if no existing household has the appropriate members.
Creating a Household
Navigate to the Household Tab of the client profile
Create a new Household by clicking the Start New Household button
Once clicked, you will now be able to add the household members. This screen will mimic the client search.
First, define the type of household being created by completing the Household Type question
Once the Household Type is selected, you can now add the clients that will make up the household. You can do this by completing the search criteria or by adding the client ID if it's known.
Now that the household members are added, you would need to identify who is the Head of Household and the relationship of all household members.
Single clients will always be Self. There is never a case where more than one client can be labeled as Self in a household.
Once done, click Save & Exit
Additional resources regarding households:
- Adding an Individual Household Member to an Existing Entry/Exit: an expanded view
- In terms of reports, Relationship to Head of Household is indicated within the assessment. See this article: Relationship To Head of Household
- Checking In Multi-person Households to ShelterPoint