Learning and Iteration Team · October 2025

The By-Name List Learning Process

What HOPE staff and service providers said about how Durham’s By-Name List actually works — and what needs to change for it to get neighbors housed faster.

City of Durham · Durham County · Durham Community Safety Department

In the first quarter of FY2026, the Durham Community Safety Department — lead agency of the Durham Continuum of Care — put two of its teams together: HOPE, and the Learning and Iteration Team (LIT Lab). The question was straightforward and uncomfortable: is the By-Name List actually getting neighbors into housing, and if not, what is getting in the way?

How the learning was done

• Two in-person workshops with four HOPE staff
• Observation of five BNL meetings, two Coordinated Entry case conferencing meetings, one Veterans Mayor’s Challenge BNL meeting, one biweekly HMIS report review, one preparation meeting, and two debriefs
• A survey of service providers, open twelve days, with fourteen respondents — 92% of them BNL meeting attendees, and all of whom always or almost always support unhoused neighbors with housing needs in their daily work
• An in-person review of the draft findings with BNL participants: nineteen attendees from Open Table Ministry, Housing for New Hope, Family Promise of the Triangle, Urban Ministries of Durham, Project Access of Durham, Entry Point Durham, and the HOPE and HEART teams

The recommendations were then checked against the Built for Zero resources shared by Community Solutions — the Quality Data Toolkit and the Case Conferencing Tool Bank — so that what Durham tries next is not invented from scratch.

What the numbers said

No respondent reported that the existing process for prioritizing households is administered equitably during BNL meetings. Nearly half were uncertain what to expect from the weekly meeting. Forty-three percent had the information they needed to prepare in time; the same share did not know how to prepare at all. Thirty-six percent said the prioritization process itself was unclear to them.

Finding 1: Case conferencing is the engine of the By-Name List

In Durham, case conferencing has historically been treated as a slow process reserved for households considered hard to house. In March 2025 it was moved out of the weekly BNL meeting into a separate biweekly meeting, so that the BNL meeting could focus on prioritizing neighbors for open housing. Some providers welcomed the split. Others pointed out that with an accurate list and equitable policies, prioritization would not need a full group at all — which would leave the group time for the housing conversation.

Whatever people call it, the components are agreed: addressing housing barriers, holding each other accountable for housing goals, and coordinating placements. Those were present in every recurring meeting observed. Several providers also said case conferencing works best informally, outside large group meetings — and that informal case conferencing can be more useful than when the lead agency runs it.

Finding 2: Recurring meetings could be sharper

Focus. The BNL meeting carries system announcements, prioritization for programs and reserved units, provider accountability, client barriers, provider updates, and HMIS data quality feedback. Providers said reviewing the whole list at once is overwhelming and suggested structuring meetings by HBA score or by sub-population. HOPE staff agreed the meeting tries to do too much, and noted that applying prioritization criteria in advance would free time for action-oriented case conferencing.

Efficiency. Downtime comes from logistics, missing client updates, and outdated information. Both staff and providers pointed to preparation, facilitation, and engagement as the levers. Several providers said sixty minutes is not enough time regardless.

Engagement. Administrators and supervisors attend more reliably than front-line workers, and one or more organizations are often absent — which has consequences for neighbors, whose cases may not be prioritized when the person who knows them is not in the room. Seventy-one percent of providers reported being actively engaged; several suggested in-person meetings would do more for participation than virtual ones, and that meeting on Zoom with cameras off does not build trust.

What was already changing. While this feedback was being gathered, the HOPE team began requesting provider updates earlier, prioritizing program openings in advance where possible, rotating facilitation among staff, and defining each person’s role in the meeting. Both staff and providers noted the difference.

Finding 3: Participants want trust and transparency

Among providers. Several respondents raised concerns that organizations are not consistently reporting program capacity week to week. Multiple respondents said certain providers were carrying an outsized share — taking a disproportionate number of one-time assistance referrals, providing case management to households enrolled elsewhere, and picking up clients exited prematurely from other programs. Housing providers worried about over-promising placements before intake is complete; front-door providers were frustrated by unclear screening criteria.

With the lead agency. Providers asked for better communication on agendas and follow-up. One noted that follow-up promised by the lead agency often takes a long time, and that the referring agency is not copied — making it hard to know who holds decision-making power.

In the policies. Providers described a lack of transparency in the Coordinated Entry Policies and Procedures and inconsistency in how they are applied. One noted the policies predate anyone using the Housing Barriers Assessment. Feedback on the HBA was mixed: a trusted resource to some, a tool with fundamental gaps to others, with confusion about how answers translate into a score.

Underneath much of this sits an unresolved disagreement about what “housing readiness” means. Some hold that a housing-first system prioritizes whoever most needs the resource, regardless of engagement or documents. Others hold that a person needs to be engaged with a project or document-ready to be prioritized. The report notes that housing readiness can operate as a proxy for mental health or substance use, which produces inequity in referrals and erodes trust.

Finding 4: Neighbors are not consistently at the center

Providers said the application process for reserved housing units was unclear, and that the lack of transparency damaged neighbors’ trust in both providers and the lead agency. Several asked for a full review of the Cedar Trace and Hardee Street process. One put it directly: there were promises that did not pan out, and neighbors were left heartbroken.

In meetings where cases are discussed, participants do not always confirm the neighbor has an active Release of Information, keep the conversation on the neighbor’s needs, or communicate what was decided back to the neighbor. There is currently no way to flag unsigned or expired ROIs, so neighbors are asked to sign duplicative forms with each provider even where a single active ROI would already cover the agencies involved. The team also identified the need for a confidentiality statement to open each meeting.

Providers said conversation often drifts from neighbors’ needs to providers’ needs — and that the same neighbors get discussed repeatedly while others are never discussed at all. This was the finding participants pushed back on hardest: at the review session, four of sixteen responses marked it as not reflective of their experience, more disagreement than any other finding drew.

Finding 5: An accurate By-Name List is not readily accessible

The most common data quality problems are missing current living situations, out-of-date HBAs, and implausibly long or short enrollment periods. Staff spend three to five hours a week manually entering program updates, with real risk of error when columns are accidentally sorted and notes land on the wrong client. Only a fifth of providers found the list easy to navigate; staff described trouble sorting and filtering it live, and the time that takes produces the silences in the meeting.

Recommendations

Immediate

So that HOPE facilitates efficient meetings that case conference every neighbor experiencing homelessness once a month.

• Redefine the purpose and attendance of existing meetings. Shift to action-oriented case conferencing that includes rapid prioritization. Divide meetings by population. Make sure everyone needed is at the table and no one is there who does not need to be. Two populations surfaced here as needing attention: households fleeing domestic violence, and formerly chronically homeless clients at risk of exiting a CoC program without a housing plan.
• Adopt a consistent facilitation method, adapting the Built for Zero Case Conferencing Tool Bank — the agenda-building kit, defined jobs in the meeting, the learning loop, and facilitation for housing placements — into an internal guide, then testing whether it actually houses people faster.
• Update the By-Name List structure. Add fields to the HMIS by-name report and move from manual updates to pulling client updates from the HMIS non-confidential notes field. Remove unnecessary fields. Add ROI expiration dates, make ROIs viewable by all providers, and move to one system-wide ROI.

The report sketches what that could look like: meetings redefined so that each one takes a meaningful step toward housing with every neighbor discussed, organized around veterans, chronically homeless neighbors, and non-chronically homeless neighbors, with one of each held in person monthly. Progress would be tracked against concrete targets — action steps identified for 75% of clients, 60% of action steps completed each week, project openings filled within four days of notification — and against whether length of time on the list starts falling.

Intermediate

• Review the Coordinated Entry Policies and Procedures with input from unsheltered neighbors and providers, and consider making the HBA scoring rubric available to providers with appropriate safeguards.
• Review the Housing Barriers Assessment with the same input, make its purpose and administration consistent, and build metrics to check whether it is doing what it is meant to do.

Long term

• Improve by-name data quality using the Built for Zero scorecards — confirming street outreach covers all of Durham County, that providers are contributing, and that the list is organized well enough to track status, de-duplicate, and analyze for equity.
• Build a transparent onboarding process for meeting participants, covering the prioritization process, how to prepare, group norms, and how to talk about neighbors and hold confidentiality.

What participants said about the findings

Nineteen BNL participants reviewed the draft in person on October 1, 2025, and marked each finding and recommendation. Finding 2 — that meetings need more focus and efficiency — drew sixteen agreements and no objections. The recommendation to review the CE Policies and Procedures drew thirteen. Two items drew real resistance: the finding on centering neighbors, and the recommendation to train HOPE in the Built for Zero facilitation method, where the facilitator noted a general lack of understanding of what that method involves and participants asked to have a say in the method chosen.

Participants also left questions the report does not answer. Whether case conferencing every neighbor monthly is arithmetically possible. Whether reserved units should be discussed separately from prioritization. How anyone would know whether policies are equitable, and if they were, whether prioritization was. Whether the lead agency’s handling of one-time versus ongoing rapid rehousing assistance has itself contributed to mistrust. Those remain open.