Understanding the Grant-Based Capacity Report

The Grant-Based Capacity Report is designed to allow CoCs to monitor how many households a CoC-funded project is serving in comparison to the estimated number of households they stated they would be serving in their official HUD application. CoCs can then utilize this information to evaluate whether a project is meeting the goals it initially set, and whether the project should continue to be funded or if the funds assigned to that project may be better utilized elsewhere.

The Grant-Based Capacity Report was built by the ICA Missouri reporting team at the request of one of the CoCs in the implementation. It is not one of HUD's System Performance Measures.

Report need-to-know
Who runs this report?	ICA, as the HMIS Lead Agency.
Can agencies run this report?	Not at this time. Only ICA can run this report at a CoC/community level.
Who gets this report?	Upon request, ICA provides this report to committees and task forces that oversee program performance. ICA typically needs at least one to two weeks notice to provide the report, but this can vary based upon current reporting workload.

Frequently Asked Questions

How is a project's capacity determined?

Generally, the grant-based capacity for a new project is gathered from the Grant Inventory Worksheet (GIW) based upon the "Fair Market Rate" costs. The GIW is published by HUD on an annual basis, then reviewed and corrected by the continuum, then returned to HUD. Each individual CoC typically adopts its own method of counting available units, and ICA records this reported capacity within ServicePoint, which is then is utilized by the reporting system to calculate the project's capacity.

Why does a project's grant-based household capacity have a decimal point in it?

When projects have changes in their overall capacity during the reporting period, the report is designed to determine the average across the entire reporting period in order to simplify the results shown on the report. Projects may have changes in their capacity for various reasons, and the changes may occur at any time. There are also typically many projects that will have an even number, and there's no expectation that projects will or will not have a decimal point in their average capacity. Here's an example:

For the purpose of this example, the report is being run for a 90 day period. Project A had a capacity of 27 units (households) at the start of the reporting period, but then changed 59 days into the period to 35 units because of an increase in funding.

This means that for 59 days, the project had a capacity of 27 units, and for 31 days, it had a capacity of 35 units. Here's how the household capacity would be calculated for Project A:

How does the report calculate what percentage of the project's capacity is being utilized?

The report first determines the average number of households served each night during the reporting period, then totals that into the number of "household nights". The total number of "household nights" is then divided by the average capacity of the project to get a percentage. Here's an example:

For the purpose of this example, we'll continue utilizing Project A from the example above. Project A had a few fluctuations in the number of households served during the 90 day period. Once compiled, it was determined that for 27 days there were 24 households being served, 24 days with 27 households, 14 days with 29 households, and 25 days with 33 households.

The capacity utilization rate for Project A is then calculated as follows:

Why do some projects have utilization rates that are over 100%?

Unit (household) capacity on the GIW is generally calculated with an assumption that all clients who are assisted by the project will have zero income and will find housing units that have the highest permitted rents for the project. However, this frequently is not the case. If a project has clients who have income and the clients pay a portion of their income toward the rent or other costs, the project can then use the remaining funds to assist more clients. In addition, if the clients find housing for which the rent is lower than the maximum permitted rent for the project, those remaining funds can also be used to assist more clients.

These scenarios result in many projects being able to serve more clients than their estimated capacity as reported on the GIW, which can, at times, result in utilization rates as high as 175%.

What can I do if my project's capacity is incorrect?

If your project's capacity appears to be incorrect, please contact the helpdesk. For CoC-funded projects, please keep in mind that the capacity typically must align with the information found within the Grant Inventory Worksheet. This means that we may not be to be able to adjust the project capacity, but we are always willing to look into it with you.

What if I have questions that haven't been answered?

If you still have questions that haven't been answered above, we encourage you to reach out to our helpdesk.