Behavioral Health Services Act (BHSA) requires that counties track specific populations of homeless individuals. Namely those that are “living in an encampment” and those who are experiencing “chronic” homelessness.
CalMHSA has always recommended that homelessness is tracked via the Problem List due to the episodic nature of homelessness. A client will often be in and out of different living environments and their status or living arrangements can change week-to-week. Since homelessness is a Social Determinant of Health (SDOH), it should be placed on the client’s problem list for tracking. This is generally done via ICD-10 code Z59 iterations.
CalMHSA stands by this tracking methodology for most uses. However, there is not a specific ICD-10 code that is used to denote “chronic homelessness” nor “living in an encampment”.
For this reason, CalMHSA will be adding two new non-SUD special populations to assist with this BHSA tracking requirement:
- Homeless – Chronic
- Homeless – Living in an Encampment
These codes will be available to use on 1/9/2026 so as to ensure counties are notified of the change before it’s present in their systems.
CalMHSA will not be able to transfer existing data to these special populations, since the problem list codes do not have a crosswalk to these options.
Special populations will allow a user to back-date the start date of the special population. This may be helpful in tracking how long a client has been homeless, if BHSA requires this type of detailed reporting. For example, a user may enter “1/1/1978” as a start date for the special population “Homeless – Chronic”.
Special populations also allow multiple special populations to exist for a client at the same time. For example, a client can have both the “Homeless – Chronic” and “Homeless – Living in an Encampment” special population during the same time period.