Supporting data aggregation and analysis with the Chicago Coalition to End Homelessness and Start Early

Background

Child and family homelessness in Illinois is a significant and growing problem — yet it remains far less visible than homelessness among single adults. Families with young children tend to experience "doubling up," short-term motel stays, and couch-surfing rather than street homelessness, making them systematically undercounted in standard point-in-time surveys and overlooked in policy responses.

In 2024, three leading Illinois organizations — Start Early, the University of Illinois Chicago (UIC) Center for Research on Women and Gender, and the Chicago Coalition to End Homelessness (CCH) — launched the Housing Insecurity and Homelessness in Illinois Among the Pregnant and Parenting (HIHIPP) initiative, with the explicit goal of developing a comprehensive 10-year action plan to prevent and end homelessness for expectant parents and families with children under age 3.

Challenge

A foundational challenge for HIHIPP was the absence of a unified, publicly navigable data resource. Relevant data existed across multiple disconnected systems — PRAMS surveys, HUD annual estimates, McKinney-Vento child counts from EdDataExpress and the Illinois Report Card Data Library, and population benchmarks from KIDS COUNT® — but no tool synthesized them into a coherent picture usable by advocates, researchers, and policymakers alike.

HIHIPP partners needed a tool that could track homelessness rates across the prenatal-to-3 continuum over time, break down estimates by geography to focus regional action, surface demographic disparities, and quantify the gap between children being served and those going unserved in early childhood programs.

Solution

The Staffing Corporation of America developed an interactive, multi-panel dashboard tracking homelessness data across two core populations — pregnant and postpartum mothers, and children ages 0–3 — organized around four analytical modules.

Module 1 — Geographic distribution by ROE

A Tableau-powered choropleth map renders estimated 0–3 homelessness rates across Illinois' Regional Offices of Education (ROEs), ranging from 0.66% to 10.99%. A second layer overlays actual McKinney-Vento child counts, letting planners distinguish high-rate regions from high-volume regions for resource allocation.

Module 2 — Pregnant mother homelessness (PRAMS 2017–2021)

Statewide pregnancy-period homelessness from 2012–2021, with a 3.34% five-year average. A demographic breakdown panel disaggregates the population by age, education, insurance, marital status, race/ethnicity, depression diagnosis, and partner abuse history — supporting HIHIPP's equity-centered framework.

Module 3 — Statewide 0–3 trend (SY2020–SY2025)

Using McKinney-Vento identifications cross-referenced against KIDS COUNT® population denominators, The Staffing Corporation of America calculated yearly estimated homelessness rates for children ages 0–3. The series shows a +35.7% increase from SY2020 to SY2025, a SY2024 peak of 4.04%, and a current statewide estimate of 2.6% — roughly 14,123 children.

Module 4 — Service gap analysis

The dashboard's most actionable output. Drawing on SchoolHouse Connection data, it quantifies how many 0–3 homeless children in Illinois are reached by existing early childhood programs:

Source: Infant and Toddler Homelessness Across 50 States, SchoolHouse Connection (SY2022–2023).

"Homelessness among pregnant and postpartum families and young children is a significant, growing problem in Illinois… national, state, and local responses to persistent homelessness do not adequately address the unique needs and conditions that families experiencing homelessness experience."

Data sources

• PRAMS — Maternal homelessness rates and demographic breakdowns, 2012–2021.
• HUD — Annual homelessness estimates informing trend context.
• EdDataExpress — National McKinney-Vento identifications in early childhood programs.
• Illinois Report Card Data Library (ISBE) — Illinois McKinney-Vento counts by ROE.
• KIDS COUNT® (Annie E. Casey Foundation) — Illinois 0–3 population denominators.

Results

• Unified the three HIHIPP partner organizations around a shared, citable evidence base for advocacy, grant applications, and the final 10-year Action Plan.
• Made the 89% service gap actionable — a headline number cited in HIHIPP outreach and CCH's public communications about the initiative.
• Enabled regional targeting by ROE — giving local stakeholders geographic specificity for outreach, funding requests, and program design.
• Surfaced demographic risk factors to support equity-informed program design, consistent with HIHIPP's focus on marginalized sub-populations.
• Outputs informed both the HIHIPP Theory of Change and the Action Plan submitted in October 2025.