Street Outreach Workers, Staff, and Volunteers to Conduct a Count of Homeless People in the Community

CINCINNATI, OH – January 26, 2015 – The Department of Housing and Urban Development requires communities to conduct an unduplicated point-in-time count of all persons who are homeless – on the streets, in emergency shelters or in transitional housing – throughout their jurisdiction.

The count for the City of Cincinnati and Hamilton County is overseen by Strategies to End Homelessness, which leads a coordinated system of care for the homeless. The count is conducted in two parts: 1) The count of people in shelters and transitional housing is managed by The Partnership Center, Inc., which operates and pulls count data from our community’s Homeless Management Information System (HMIS), and 2) the unsheltered count, which is conducted by local street outreach workers and volunteers going out in teams to count homeless people who are literally on the streets.

“HUD is the single largest funder of services and housing for the homeless, so as HUD requires, we do an annual point-in-time count of homeless people during the last week in January,” said Kevin Finn, president and CEO of Strategies to End Homelessness. “The timing of the count is strategic; the cold brings more people into shelter where they are easier to count, and at the end of the month people are less likely to have money for a night or two in a motel. Both of these factors enable us to get a more realistic count, and such counts give us insight into the true scope of the problem,” he added.

In addition to counting homeless people who are inside sheltering from the cold, for weeks outreach workers have been noting the locations where homeless people have been camping out. Finally, tomorrow night, they will go out with volunteers to all known and suspected homeless camps to take an official count. HUD considers a person homeless if he or she is sleeping in a place not meant for human habitation, or is a current resident of an emergency shelter or transitional housing program for the homeless.

Strategies to End Homelessness will release the final count in several weeks.