Shasta Scout Explains: What Is a Point-In-Time Count?
The PIT count is meant to help all levels of government match available resources to current needs, with the aim of ending homelessness.
Point-in-Time (PIT) counts are completed annually across the United States to provide data on homeless individuals. This Housing and Urban Development (HUD) mandated process helps federal, state, and local agencies plan for the funding and resources needed to work toward ending homelessness.
It is also one of the functions that the NorCal Continuum of Care (NorCal CoC) has had to reassess with the departure of Shasta County as the lead agency of the NorCal Continuum.
Each county in the NorCal CoC, a seven-county collaboration that includes Shasta County, has been organizing its own local PIT count annually. All counties must follow the same standards and share data with the Continuum’s administrative lead agency allowing for a single collaborative annual report that can be submitted to HUD.
The PIT count always takes place within the last ten days of January, so planning for Shasta County’s 2024 count has already begun.
Read on to learn more.
When and why does the PIT Count occur?
The PIT Count is an annual process that takes place on a single day in January to collect data about all people living without consistent, reliable shelter in the same geographic region. The count allows government agencies, nonprofits, and for profit organizations to assess how needs and current resources overlap in order to meet the gaps that contribute to ongoing homelessness.
Who’s counted?
The “Sheltered” PIT Count includes individuals who are staying temporarily at an emergency shelter, in transitional housing, or in a Safe Haven program on the night of the PIT Count. The Sheltered PIT Count must be completed every year. According to HUD guidelines this count does not include incarcerated people, or people staying in hospitals or a few other types of institutions.
The “Unsheltered” PIT Count includes individuals who do not have any shelter (as defined by HUD) and are sleeping in a place like a park, bus station, airport, or camp ground. The unsheltered PIT count only has to take place every other year, on odd-numbered years, to meet HUD requirements. While it’s not required annually, the NorCal CoC has conducted this count annually since at least 2016.
How is PIT Count information used?
The data collected is intended to be used locally, regionally, and nationally to measure homelessness, prioritize services, and plan for resources to help end it. PIT Count data is needed for the annual CoC Program Competition which is how CoCs apply for funding. The federal government includes some PIT Count data in its Annual Homeless Assessment Report (AHAR), a report that is shared with the U.S. Congress.
How are people counted?
On a single night in January, PIT Counts are conducted all across the United States to gain a snapshot into the lives of people who HUD considers “literally homeless.” The count is conducted at the same time each year for consistency so that the results may be compared to previous years with more accuracy. According to HUD, January is chosen for the annual PIT counts because during the winter dates “each CoC is likely maximizing its resources to serve people’s needs. Thus, this timing can provide a more precise picture of who is unable to access emergency shelter or other crisis response assistance.”
In the North State, each year the seven counties that collaborate under the NorCal CoC form a PIT Count Committee to coordinate and train volunteers for the annual count. While each county conducts a separate PIT Count, they use the same survey and process and the information from those individuals counts is submitted to HUD collaboratively.
The sheltered count involves taking an inventory of individuals staying in what HUD defines as “shelters.” The NorCal CoC uses a HUD approved sampling method, meaning that while the counties do not survey every person they do collect representative data by analyzing a random sampling of individuals. In contrast, to count unsheltered community members the NorCal CoC uses a census method that involves a “direct and complete count of all people and their characteristics,” according to the 2023 NorCal CoC PIT Report.
What information is collected during the PIT Count?
While counties can design their own PIT survey, they must be sure to collect and report certain information in order to be eligible to apply for HUD funding. Each year HUD defines exactly what information needs to be collected but surveys always include collecting demographic information, including age, gender, race, and ethnicity.
The surveys also seek to record the reason why an individual became homeless, whether they experience “serious mental illness,” “substance use disorder” or are diagnosed with HIV/AIDS and whether they’ve experienced or are experiencing domestic violence.
CoCs are also asked to report information about whether individuals are veterans or youth and whether they are experiencing chronic homelessness.
If PIT volunteers encounter individuals who do not wish to answer survey questions they are instructed to use HUD’s Observational Tool, which involves guessing an individual’s age, gender, race and other characteristics and recording their information that way.
How accurate is the PIT Count?
Conducting an accurate PIT Count can be challenging for many reasons.
According to a 2021 report conducted by the independent non-partisan U.S. Government Accountability Office, it is extremely difficult to accurately count all people living in cars, abandoned buildings, and other deserted places, in part because some of the population does not wish to be found.
When volunteers encounter unsheltered individuals that either volunteers don’t want to approach, or who don’t want to answer the volunteers questions, these individuals can still be counted using an observational tool that involves guesses of demographic information. This system means the accuracy of the count depends largely on the training volunteers receive about how to approach people. It also depends on whether unsheltered community members feel enough trust with those volunteers to provide sensitive demographic information.
A report published by the National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty in 2017 indicates that homeless community members are greatly undercounted during annual PIT counts for this reason and many others including inconsistent methodology, inaccuracy of locating and counting unsheltered residents, and the fact that only certain kinds of homelessness are counted. HUD does not include people who are temporarily staying with family or friends or those in certain types of institutions in annual PIT counts.
Where can I see PIT Count data?
In 2023 the NorCal CoC Lead Agency, Shasta County Housing and Community Action Agency oversaw the data collection and assistance of trained staff and volunteers. The Lead Agency also completed an audit of each PIT Count survey that included evaluations of the data quality, checking for completeness, and using data logic checks to identify duplicative counts.
Reports for each of the NorCal CoC’s annual PIT counts can be found on the Shasta County Housing and Community Action Programs site. The reports include an overview of the count for the entire NorCal CoC seven county region, as well as breakdowns of the count for each county.
HUD data for CoC’s all across the county can be on the HUD website.
Related resources:
Shasta Scout Explains: What Is A Continuum of Care?
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Clearly, this PIT count is seriously defective and dramatically underestimates the real number of unhoused people and their characterstics. Of particular concern is the low number of families, children and women included and interviewed. The predictable result is that if you only look in the obvious places you will only find what you want to find. This results in a view of homelessness that is concentrated on slovenly habits, messiness, addictions, severe mental illness and even lifetimes of anti-social and destructive or criminal behaviors. As such, it vastly misrepresents the need and evades proposals for any sensible solutions, especially for program support.
After clicking on the summary report for all the counties, note the strong indicators:
Based on totals for each county, it is likely that Shasta County is most severely undercounted (1,013 in Shasta versus 507 in Siskiyou and 694 in Del Norte)
Severe increase in homeless veterans!
Most of those counted were in cars or camps (not shelters)
More explicitly, self stated personal issues around mental illness or substance abuse are not related to those in recovery; most typical reason for homelessness is “loss of income – inability to afford rent.”
Ask yourself, if you had only $980 per month as a disabled person on SSI, where would you find a place to rent + utilities + deposits + groceries + transportation + medications + clothing????