Shelter Operations · HMIS · Housing
Shelter bed availability: the problem and what's possible.
Los Angeles has 75,000+ unhoused residents and 16,000 funded shelter beds — but 5,000 people sit on waitlists every night while 1 in 4 beds sits empty. The reason documented by the City Controller: providers don't know which beds are available, and neither does anyone else. LAHSA launched a central inventory module in 2025 to fix this. The problem is that the data feeding into it is still largely manual. ShipyardLA builds the provider-side tools that change that.
The problem
Why beds sit empty while people wait.
A 2024 City Controller audit found that 1 in 4 LAHSA-funded shelter beds sat empty on any given night, while 5,000 people waited on lists to get in. The cause wasn't a shortage of beds — it was a shortage of accurate information. LAHSA previously tracked availability through a 'patchwork of spreadsheets,' often updated once a day at best, often wrong. Shelter coordinators were calling each other to ask if there were open beds. People waiting on the street couldn't get matched to beds that existed and were empty.
LAHSA responded with an Interim Housing Inventory Module built inside their HMIS system (Bitfocus Clarity), launched in January 2025 with automated matching starting July 2025. The module is a real step forward — a central place where bed availability across all LAHSA-funded providers is supposed to be visible in real time. But 'real time' depends entirely on providers keeping their data current. And today, that still means staff manually logging into the Clarity web portal every morning, or submitting Excel templates through a support ticket. Neither approach is fast enough, accurate enough, or mobile-friendly enough for the reality of how shelter floors actually operate.
- 5,000 people on shelter waitlists every night while 1 in 4 funded beds sits empty
- LAHSA's central inventory module depends on providers updating bed status manually each morning
- No mobile access — shelter floor staff can't update availability from a phone
- Discharge → bed-becomes-available → LAHSA sees it: currently a multi-step manual process
- Excel template submissions via ticketing system for providers not yet fully onboarded
- No automated notifications when a provider's data goes stale or hasn't been updated
Research sources
LAist — How a new real-time database could match LA's unhoused people with shelter beds ↗LAHSA — IH Inventory Module launch memo (2025) ↗LAHSA — HMIS Inventory resources for providers ↗LAHSA Medium — Real-time tracking of IH bed availability ↗Bitfocus — Inventory Toolkit and API documentation ↗How we approach this
No API access required. Designed to deliver meaningful improvement to your data quality in LAHSA's module — starting with a provider-side tracking dashboard and automated LAHSA export.
Automated LAHSA Excel export
Your internal bed status data (managed in a simple staff-facing interface) generates the LAHSA-formatted Excel template automatically on a configurable schedule — daily, or triggered by a discharge event. Submitted to LAHSA's ticketing system without staff manually building the spreadsheet.
Provider-side bed tracking dashboard
A simple web or mobile interface for shelter staff to mark beds as occupied, available, or offline. No Clarity login required. Your source of truth that feeds the LAHSA export and gives your operations lead visibility without calling the floor.
Discharge workflow integration
When a resident is discharged in your case management system, a bed automatically flips to available in your dashboard and the next LAHSA export reflects it — no separate manual step.
Stale data alerts
If your bed availability hasn't been updated in the last 12 hours, your operations lead gets an alert. Simple, high-leverage, buildable immediately.
A note on LAHSA's API access
LA's HMIS runs on Bitfocus Clarity (la.clarityhs.com). Bitfocus offers a GraphQL Operational API and an XML import API — but as of mid-2026, neither covers bed inventory data. The Operational API is in Early Access and currently closed to new entrants; the Data Analysis API can read bed availability but with a 2+ hour lag, read-only.
There is no published API for directly writing bed availability into LAHSA's inventory module. Programmatic integration would require a formal partnership with LAHSA and Bitfocus — something worth understanding as this space matures. For now, we build tools that automate the manual update workflow and dramatically reduce the time between a bed becoming available and LAHSA's system reflecting it.
What becomes possible
These are the solutions we could build — contingent on the right data access from LAHSA and Bitfocus Clarity. None of this is live today. This is what we'd pursue with the right partner and the right access in place.
Access dependency
The solutions below require either Bitfocus Operational API access (currently closed EAP, enrollment-focused, no inventory coverage yet) or a formal data-sharing agreement with LAHSA. Neither exists as a public integration path today. These are possible solutions — not current offerings — that become buildable once that access is in place.
Mobile bed status dashboard
A phone-optimized interface for shelter floor staff — one tap to mark a bed occupied, available, or offline. Offline-capable for facilities with spotty wifi. Requires read/write access to Clarity inventory data.
Requires: Bitfocus Clarity API with inventory write access
Discharge → available automation
When a resident is discharged from your case management system, a bed automatically flips to available in LAHSA's module — without a separate manual step. Minutes, not the next morning.
Requires: Bitfocus Clarity API with inventory write access
LAHSA Clarity sync
Bed status changes push directly to Bitfocus Clarity in real time. Alternatively: auto-generate LAHSA's Excel Data Collection Template on a schedule and submit it without staff involvement.
Requires: Bitfocus API access or LAHSA data-sharing agreement
Stale data alerts
If bed availability hasn't been updated in the last 12 hours, the system alerts your operations lead. LAHSA's matching algorithm is only as good as the data feeding it.
Requires: Read access to Clarity inventory data or provider-side tracking
Staff-facing occupancy view
Program directors see live occupancy: filled beds, available beds, expected openings, units offline. Replaces morning phone calls and email chains across your network.
Requires: Bitfocus Data Analysis API (available, 2hr lag) or direct inventory access
Waitlist integration
When a bed becomes available, your internal waitlist surfaces immediately — client priority, contact information, CES matching status. One workflow instead of three.
Requires: HMIS API access + CES data-sharing agreement
Why this matters beyond operations
LAHSA's automated matching system — launched July 2025 — connects unhoused people with open beds based on inventory data. When your data is accurate and current, your beds get matched. When it's stale or wrong, your beds sit in the system as 'unknown' and real people who could be placed there aren't. Accurate provider data directly determines whether the matching algorithm works for the people your organization was funded to serve.
There's also a funding dimension. LAHSA's performance reporting and eventual HSH contract monitoring will increasingly look at bed utilization rates. Providers whose utilization data shows beds sitting empty — because their inventory data wasn't current — face questions about efficiency at renewal time. Accurate real-time data is both an operations win and a contract compliance posture.
Operating shelter beds and wrestling with LAHSA's inventory system?
Book a free 30-minute call. Tell me how your staff currently updates bed availability and how often your data in LAHSA's system is accurate. We'll talk through what's actually fixable.
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