This year HUD updated the 2018 Housing Inventory Count (HIC) and PIT count to include "those who are currently experiencing homelessness because they are fleeing domestic violence, dating violence, sexual assault, or stalking" — as opposed to reporting on survivors who have ever experienced those circumstances. HUD updated its model surveys to help communities know what questions to ask to fulfill HUD's required data points.
With this change, HUD is striving to more accurately capture whether a survivor's primary cause of current homelessness is due to fleeing, or attempting to flee domestic violence, dating violence, sexual assault, and stalking. This change in guidance is intended to improve accuracy in the count of individuals and families currently experiencing domestic violence and who qualify as homeless as a result of:
- Fleeing, or attempting to flee;
- Having no other residence; and
- Lacking the resources or support networks to obtain other permanent housing.
HUD is excited to announce that it released a new page focused on counting survivors of domestic violence (DV) in the PIT count. Given how close we are to the count, these resources focus primarily on the importance on partnering with DV providers in the count process and provide some best practices on actions that can be taken on the night of the count to try to accurately collect data on survivors of domestic violence. HUD intends to provide more guidance in the future that focuses on how to better partner with DV stakeholders in the months leading up to the count.
These resources are intended to improve our ability to understand the intersection between domestic violence and homelessness and help us better serve survivors. In the context of the PIT count and other data collection, it is critical to strike the balance between collecting accurate data and ensuring the privacy and confidentiality of people experiencing homelessness, especially with regard to their domestic violence experience. These new resources are intended to help guide communities to striking that balance.
If you have questions about the 2018 HIC and PIT count or counting survivors of domestic violence in the PIT count, please submit them to the HUD Exchange Ask A Question (AAQ) portal on the HUD Exchange website. To submit a question to the HUD Exchange AAQ portal, select "HDX: Homelessness Data Exchange" from the "My question is related to" drop down list on Step 2 of the question submission process. | 
