Hundreds of volunteers gathered early last week to survey the homeless population in the Phoenix area as part of the annual Point-in-Time count.
The Point-in-Time count is a single-night tally of sheltered and unsheltered homeless used as an important data point to track the progress of existing programs and to guide policymakers in future initiatives.
Katie Gentry, a Phoenix City Council aide on human services issues, said approximately 220 volunteers turned out in 40 degree weather to conduct the assessment on Jan. 23.
Community Bridges, a non-profit organization that provides behavioral health programs, the Maricopa County Defender’s Office, veterans and independent volunteers helped with the count, she said.
The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development requires communities to submit the Point-in-Time counts, according to Anne Scott, a human services planner for the Maricopa Association of Governments. Without the count, communities won’t receive funding for permanent housing resources for the homeless.
Data from the Point-in-Time count will be analyzed by May.
“We’ve seen a 20 to 27 percent increase in unsheltered homeless every year since 2014,” Scott said.
In recent years the city of Phoenix has struggled with developing programs to effectively address homelessness.
The city unveiled a new plan in November called PHX C.A.R.E.S. which centralizes the city’s homeless efforts. The program is based around a single phone number and website people can use to connect with the city’s homeless services.
RELATED: PHX C.A.R.E.S. homeless program unveiled at City Hall
In August 2016 there was also concerns an overflow homeless shelter at the Human Services Camp near downtown Phoenix would close due to a lack of funding. The shelter was able to stay open with temporary funding.
According to Scott, the Maricopa Association of Governments will be partnering up with Focus Strategies, a Sacramento-based organization that evaluates Point-in-Time counts, for an outside perspective on how to improve its homelessness prevention system. The association received a housing and urban development grant to fund a system analysis and bring in Focus Strategies to help.
“We’re using Focus Strategies to come into the community and evaluate our homeless services system and to look for strengths and opportunities within the system,” Scott said. “It’s really an opportunity for us to work with somebody outside the community who can come in with fresh eyes and look at our whole system.”
Focus Strategies is a nine-person team that has worked for a range of clients in the United States including local and state government agencies, philanthropic entities and nonprofit advocacy and intermediary organizations.
“In partnership with the National Alliance to End Homelessness, Focus Strategies created a set of tools designed to help communities use local data to understand their current systems’ performance and to model large-scale system changes,” said Tracy Bennett, director of analytics and evaluation at Focus Strategies.
The Maricopa association will be showing Focus Strategies how their homelessness initiative works, what their current inventory for housing is and what their current needs are in the community. Focus Strategies will help it identify its needs and what it would cost to have a system that provides all the necessary services to reduce homelessness.
Scott said she believes local homelessness is an issue where the county can make a lot of progress. She said many things will be difficult to resolve, but that they will continue to move forward.
“I feel passionately about helping people and particularly people that live on the streets,” Scott said. “I feel strongly that we, as a community, can band together, that we can solve this problem, and that we can give people not only housing, but also the kind of support they need to stay housed.”
The contract with Focus Strategies will start mid-February and will end November 2018.
Contact the reporter at Maia.Ordonez@asu.edu.
