How to Count Bed Nights

How do you report the “total number of shelter bed-nights available” and “total number of shelter bed-nights provided” on screen CR-70 of the ESG CAPER template in the eCon Planning Suite?

The “total number of shelter bed-nights available” is the total number of beds in all shelters the recipient funded with ESG that were available to program participants during the reporting period (the recipient’s program year). HUD does not require or expect that individual beds within an emergency shelter will be attributed to a funder; that is, HUD does not expect that an HMIS can distinguish an “ESG bed” from any other bed. Therefore, recipients should count all emergency shelter beds within each shelter that the recipient funded with ESG.

For example, if all beds are available year-round in all ESG-funded shelters within the recipient’s jurisdiction, multiply the total number of beds (all beds in all ESG-funded shelters) by 365, the total number of nights that the beds were available during the reporting period. In this example, if there were 3 ESG-funded shelters in the jurisdiction, and two had 25 beds available year-round and one had 100 beds available year-round, then you would multiply 150 beds x 365 nights, which is 54,750 bed-nights available. 

If certain beds are seasonal (e.g., only during the winter months) then the recipient must multiply the total number of seasonal beds by the number of nights each bed was available during the reporting period (e.g. 61 days if the beds were only available during December and January of the reporting period). In this example, let’s say one of the 25-bed shelters was a seasonal shelter, open November 1 through March 30 (151 nights). This shelter offers 3,775 bed-nights (25 x 151). The other two (100 beds and 25 beds) are available year-round, so you would multiply 125 beds x 365 nights, which is 45,625. You would add 3,775 + 45,625 for a total of 49,400 bed-nights available. 

The next row, “total number of bed-nights provided,” is the total number of beds in all shelters the recipient funded with ESG that were filled each night during the reporting period. This information should come from the HMIS.

The “Capacity Utilization” row is auto-populated by IDIS, based on the data entered in the preceding rows.