The Housing and Homelessness Commission voted unanimously Thursday to approve a grant for the Homeless Management Information System in hopes of gathering of better data and operation of city services for the homeless.

The Alliance to End Homelessness in suburban Cook County requested $20,500 for HMIS to “ensure full participation and exceptional data quality for all Evanston homeless shelter programs,” according to city documents.

The HMIS is a database mandated by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and is used throughout the Cook County Continuum of Care — a program that promotes community-wide commitment to the goal of ending homelessness. The system stores data on individual homeless people and provisions of housing and services, according to city documents.

Commission member Renee Phillips said the data HMIS provides is important, allowing the city to better understand homelessness and measure progress.

The Alliance is an agency in charge of implementing and administering the database, in addition to training users. Since 2008, the system has grown from 27 providers entering data on 1,300 clients to over 40 agencies entering data on over 8,000 clients each year.

Jennifer Hill, the executive director of the Alliance, said the funding would help update their systems to assess the vulnerability of the homeless population, ordering a binding list of people.

Housing and grants division manager Sarah Flax said HMIS is used to determine the city’s Continuum of Care funding. Most of Evanston’s homeless funding comes through the Alliance to End Homelessness of Suburban Cook County, Flax said. Due to competition in receiving funding, the data from HMIS is “critical” in making the city’s Continuum of Care program competitive, Flax said.

“It really is a major and very essential piece of the functioning of the continuum and of Evanston getting the funding that comes directly to our agencies who are supported through Continuum of Care,” Flax said.

Flax added that the city funds HMIS through the affordable housing fund “because it really is a critical piece of the whole functioning of the Continuum of Care.”

Using local funds for HMIS maintains compliance with the Federal mandate all Emergency Solutions Grants recipients use the database, leveraging significant federal funds for needed services in the city, according to city documents.

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