Every year on a single night in January, hundreds of volunteers fan out in several communities across the state of Kansas to count every homeless person they encounter – on streets, in shelters, along rivers and within motel rooms. This year, organizers counted 2,815 homeless Kansans across the state, according to numbers released Wednesday by the Kansas Statewide Homeless Coalition. This is a 6.8% increase from last year’s total of 2,636. This tally, called the point-in-time count, is important for establishing a foundation for how prevalent homelessness is in communities across the country. But it’s data gathered on one night in the dead of winter – and homelessness fluctuates throughout the year. Why does the point-in-time count matter? What does counting our homeless tell service providers? How does surveying homeless people benefit local policy? “Point-in-time gives us an idea of what the gaps are and where we need to focus these resources. There’s also a housing inventory count that takes place at the same time,” Lowe says. “So if we go out and do the count and see that there’s an increasing number of unsheltered people, we’ve got to focus our resources on addressing unsheltered homelessness,” which involves a person living in a place not meant for human habitation, whether that’s a car, park or abandoned building. “If we go out and there’s a whole lot of senior citizens, we need to go after resources to address that population,” Lowe says. Another incentive: the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) requires communities to conduct a point-in-time count at least every other year for points in the nationwide competition for federal funding.
Source: KLC Journal
