Behind Steller Tech is an ethos of action. See something wrong, do something about it. As such we have already developed our first offering, Steller’s Jay.

Working to serve folks experiencing homelessness in supportive housing, we were regularly confronted with the challenge of qualifying program participants as Long-Term Homeless (LTH) under Minnesota Housing’s definition. The most arduous part of an already long and invasive intake process, program participants are expected to provide a case manager with a detailed housing history and documentation of every place they have slept for the last 4 years, a time during which they were, by definition, experiencing major housing instability. Case Managers are expected to capture all of this information neatly on a paper form, to manually calculate if the history qualifies as LTH, to maintain this paper form in a file, and to update a separate database reflecting the qualification. Program Managers and Administrators are tasked with ensuring the accuracy of the file including this document, as well as that HMIS data and reporting requirements are met for LTH and its many co-enrollments.

Steller’s Jay is an electronic form that dramatically simplifies the LTH qualification process.

Formatted to be easy to use and as clear as possible, users will only see the questions and response options that help qualify someone under the specific LTH definition. Steller’s Jay will flag users if there is an error, if something is missing, or if there is a gap in housing history. It’s intuitive editing accommodates the human memory behind the data. It completes the LTH calculation for the case managers, removing an opportunity for human error. When complete, information populates directly into a print screen that matches Minnesota Housing’s current form exactly.