Glossary
Key Terms
Abbreviations
RRH — Rapid Rehousing
Short-to-medium-term rental assistance and case management that helps youth move quickly into their own lease, with support tapering off over time.
PSH — Permanent Supportive Housing
Long-term rental assistance paired with ongoing supportive services, for youth who need continued support to sustain housing.
FYI Vouchers — Family Unification Program – Youth
A federal rental voucher specifically for young people aging out of foster care.
TH — Transitional Housing
Time-limited housing, typically 1–24 months, that provides supportive services as a step toward permanent housing.
HUD — U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development
The federal agency that funds most homelessness programs and sets the definitions this report uses for who counts as "homeless," what counts as a housing program, and how communities report their numbers. Most figures on this site are presented through HUD's definitions and reporting rules, not a broader or more informal definition of homelessness.
CoC — Continuum of Care
A HUD-designated regional planning body responsible for coordinating homelessness services and funding across a defined geographic area (a city, county, or multi-county region). Ohio has several CoCs; this report reviews five of them — Toledo, Dayton, Akron, Canton, and the Balance of State (which covers most of the rest of Ohio).
HMIS — Homeless Management Information System
The shared database CoCs use to record client-level information about people accessing homelessness services — entries, exits, demographics, and outcomes. Most of the figures in this report are drawn from HMIS records.
PIT Count — Point-in-Time Count
An annual, HUD-required one-night count (in January) of people experiencing homelessness in a CoC's area, both sheltered and unsheltered. It's a snapshot, not a total for the year — someone counted once in January may cycle through the system multiple times before or after that night.
HIC — Housing Inventory Count
A HUD-required annual inventory of the shelter and housing beds available in a CoC on a given night, broken out by program type (emergency shelter, transitional housing, rapid rehousing, permanent supportive housing). This report uses HIC figures to describe documented bed and unit capacity.
YYA — Youth and Young Adult
Shorthand covering both age brackets this report tracks — unaccompanied minors (14–17) and young adult heads of household (18–24). Shows up mostly in the Balance of State's planning materials (e.g., "More YYA beds across the board," "YYA-dedicated eviction prevention").
Key Terms
Coordinated Entry
The standardized front door a CoC uses to assess people seeking housing help and connect them to the right program, rather than requiring them to apply separately to each provider.
Diversion
A conversation-based intervention at the point someone seeks shelter, aimed at identifying a safe housing option outside the shelter system — for example, mediating a return to a family member's home. Distinct from prevention, which intervenes before someone reaches a shelter door.
Sheltered / Unsheltered
"Sheltered" describes people staying in emergency shelter or transitional housing on a given night. "Unsheltered" describes people staying somewhere not meant for human habitation — a car, a park, the street. Both categories count as homeless under HUD's definition used in this report.
Unaccompanied Minor
A person under 18 experiencing homelessness without a parent or guardian present.
Young Adult
In this report, a person ages 15–24 experiencing homelessness, tracked separately from unaccompanied minors because they generally move through different parts of the system (adult-style programs and eligibility rules, rather than child welfare or youth-specific shelter).
Pathway
A pathway is the combination of project types that a household uses before it exits the homeless system and, ideally, enters permanent housing. Pathways are helpful to demonstrate the combination of project types that households use within a community’s homeless response system and how effective those combinations are at resolving homelessness
Stella System Mapping
The term Stella system mapping most commonly refers to the System Performance Map used in the HUD Stella Performance (Stella P) software for homeless response systems, or to system dynamics mapping using the STELLA programming language.