Hundreds of Shasta County’s Unhoused Community Members Participate in Annual Point-in-Time Count

A little past 9 AM on January 22, dozens of unhoused community members began to fill New Life Discovery Project’s Placer Street location. At first they trickled in, then they began to arrive in a heavy stream — some with bikes and carts, others with canes and wheelchairs, most with bags or backpacks, and many with dogs. 

With the support of staff members from about 15 different Shasta County service providers, some of the arriving local unhoused residents rifled through donated clothes, coats and shoes before moving to a makeshift dining area where they met one-on-one with staffers to participate in a brief survey for this year’s Point-in-Time Count. 

The PIT Count, as it’s more frequently known, is conducted by Continuums of Care across the nation at the direction of the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). In far northern California, the NorCal Continuum of Care comprises seven counties, including Shasta, that collaborate to provide services to individuals experiencing housing insecurity. The NorCal CoC’s focus ranges from offering resources to those currently experiencing life on the streets, to guiding people in emergency and transitional housing settings towards stable permanent housing, and all the steps in between.

Dawn Pittore, a social worker with Shasta County’s Health and Human Services Agency, was among the personnel on site at New Life Discovery Project yesterday. From behind her laptop screen, Pittore reviewed big-picture data related to submissions of online PIT Count surveys as forms were submitted by staff in real time across the seven counties of the NorCal Continuum of Care. 

The bulk of those submissions as of 9 AM had come from Shasta County, which is home to the largest unhoused community of any single County within the NorCal CoC. The last PIT Count, in January 2023, documented Shasta’s total unhoused population at just over 1,000. Data revealed by the PIT Count helps to illuminate the root causes behind homelessness. For example, 14% of those surveyed in 2023 said they first became homeless after some kind of family break-up, which could include partner breakups as well as parent-child, or sibling disagreements.

During yesterday’s outreach, PIT Count team members sat at folding tables where they met with those who voluntarily agreed to respond to basic questions about their homelessness status, before grabbing breakfast, drinks, and other resources, including feminine hygiene products and gift cards from the Dollar Store. Shasta County service providers now mostly fill out client PIT Count surveys online, using an app that’s pulled up on staffers’ cell phones. The surveys start with a simple question: where did you sleep last night? 

Some responses listed on the survey, such as “motel,” “jail”, “emergency shelter,” or “friend’s home,” are used to indicate the respondent is currently sheltered but not in stable housing. Other responses like “sidewalk,” “vehicle,” and “under bridge,” document the unsheltered with no access to a safe place to live, even a temporary one.

The way this data is collected leaves blindspots. Under HUD policies, communities conduct separate sheltered and unsheltered counts for the two groups, contacting sheltered individuals via known programs like the Good News Rescue Mission. This process misses many of those who lack stable permanent housing, including youth, who often find temporary shelter informally at friends’ homes. Data included in a 2017 National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty report indicates that true homeless numbers are likely somewhere between 2.5–10 times as many as indicated by local PIT Counts. 

While the team at New Life Discovery Project met with homeless community members onsite, staffers from service organizations deployed out into the city to tally unhoused folks still on the streets. By noon, staffers also began fanning out across the area to approach community members living in communal, self-organized shelters known as encampments, or camps. They distributed bags of resources equipped with reflectors, hand warmers, a beanie and gloves, and snacks.

Procuring supplies and coordinating the complex logistics of the Count requires a subset of the NorCal Continuum of Care Shasta Advisory Board team to hustle for months. The three PIT Count coordinators behind this year’s effort include FaithWorks Executive Director Crystal Spencer, Pathways to Housing Executive Director Lesha Schaefer, and Megan Preller, a social worker and Host Homes Coordinator with Ready for Life. More than 80 staffers from various organizations helped conduct yesterday’s event. And that’s just in Shasta. 

In the weeks leading up to the PIT Count, organizers met with members of the Redding Police Department to explain the importance of the survey, and request that police officers refrain from disrupting camps where the houseless congregate, in order to make it easier to contact hte unhoused for the survey. During a recent NorCal CoC Advisory Board meeting, Preller described RPD as curious about the PIT Count process and accommodating to the team’s requests. PIT Count organizers said they do not include RPD representatives as part of the Count itself, since many in the unhoused community associate the police with enforcement rather than resources. 

Now that the data has been collected, a PIT Count team representative from each NorCal CoC County will report back to the NorCal CoC Executive Committee as the full results are submitted to HUD. None of the organizers received any additional funding for their participation. Instead, they’re motivated by the importance of providing a full count of as many of Shasta County’s unhoused population as possible. Accurately documenting the need for resources will, in time, qualify Shasta County for more federal and state funding for homeless response.

Appearing to find a little bit of reprieve from the daily challenges of living outside, community members at the New Life Discovery Project ate burritos washed down with energy drinks as they greeted old friends. Some slipped brightly-colored donated collars and leashes onto their dogs, who also relaxed, many with newly-procured rawhide bones. Participants flashed easy smiles to one another and staff members as they responded to survey questions and then stayed to talk.

Making sure they feel safe, comfortable and welcome, Spencer said, is integral to the endeavor’s success.

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