Durham runs a single by-name list of everyone experiencing homelessness, drawn from HMIS. The headline figure — the One Number — is published monthly. If it isn’t moving, the system isn’t working.
Three categories — system outcomes, operational performance, equity & voice — reviewed monthly by the Champions Table and disaggregated by race, ethnicity, gender, and age.
Each has its own discipline, contracts, and metrics — but they’re sequenced around the same households at the same time. That synchronization is the whole point.
Public funding provides the operating floor; private community investment provides the agility to act on opportunities public funding cycles can’t accommodate.
A 25-day sprint housed 15 families against a goal of 10 — plus three more into non-congregate shelter — when a winter storm pushed ten families into hotels and the family shelter was full.
It worked because every component showed up at once, around the same households, with a deadline: payments in one business day, real units, housing-focused case management, and daily coordination clearing stuck cases in hours.
A strategy that works can still fail if no one believes it’s working. Durham publishes progress as it happens, in the voices of many partners, with concrete numbers.
The story is told as the work happens — every sprint, every landlord onboarded, every household housed — not in an annual report after the fact.
A common choir — bank executive, hospital leader, school principal, Champion, person with lived experience, elected official — builds confidence no single agency’s claim can.
“Reduce veteran homelessness 30%” beats “better outcomes.” A first-day-in-housing photo beats a chart. Reaching the movable middle takes visible progress.