There's a better way to track homelessness than point-in-time count alone, Phoenix advocate says
Download mp3 (12.37 MB)The annual point-in-time count took place in Maricopa County this week. The federally-mandated count means, in the wee hours of the morning, once a year in January, volunteers spread out across the region to go out and count the number of people experiencing homelessness in the Valley.
But, the count is only as true as its name. The point-in-time count measures a point in time — and how many people they’re able to locate at that time each year. It’s the main determinant of federal funds from the Department of Housing and Urban Development.
Richard Crews works in homeless services in Phoenix, and says they already have a good handle on how many people are experiencing homelessness — and the point-in-time count tends to be an undercount.
Crews is the program director for the Human Services Campus, which has rebranded as Keys To Change. The Show spoke with him about it.
Interview highlights
RICHARD CREWS: So the accuracy of the count is that the count happens every year, right? So it's a year-over-year number that we can say has been counted with that fidelity year over year for you know, a great number of years going back. That's the accuracy of the count. At the same time, you know, we're working with a population that's good at not being counted. That's good at not being found. That's good at existing in, you know, as a means of survival in the cracks and crevices of society. And so there's thousands of people that are also not counted every year — and maybe that's an overestimation in terms of that grand number. But the the the accuracy of the numbers is just in that we've done this number on this date consistently and historically. That this point in time, this was the number of people we were able to count.
Do you think there is consistently an undercount involved in this?
CREWS: There definitely is, there are definitely. And like I would say that even in terms of how homelessness is rising in different populations. What definitely gets drastically undercounted would be like family homelessness.
So you'll give an example of some of these cities that will come back with really low numbers around how many people are currently experiencing homelessness in their city.
They're not talking about families that are living in cars, you know. This working population that is now experiencing homelessness and in greater numbers that, again, we're not like it's not who you traditionally think of when you're talking about: What's the poster child for those experiencing homelessness?
How does that reate problems probably down the line when it comes to that, that all important federal HUD funding?
CREWS: So we want to make sure that this number is where it needs to be and that needs to be just from a standpoint of being accurate. We need to be able to say to HUD: ..."Hey, we have this problem with this population in Phoenix or in Maricopa County. So there needs to be additional dollars to come in to focus on our youth strategy. There needs to be additional dollars that come in and focus on our senior strategy. There needs to be additional dollars that come in to focus on building capacity for shelter, right?"
But if we undercount in any given population, then that now puts us in a disadvantageous position when we do go for funding to build capacity around these initiatives.
So there is another way of getting account of of the number of people who are experiencing homelessness in our community. They're called by-name lists. It sounds like you keep one there at, at the Keys campus. Tell us a little bit about how that approach works, how different it is.
CREWS: So OK, think of this in a completely different function. The by-name list is the list of all those currently active in the system experiencing homelessness. So this has a roughly 7,000-plus individuals currently in the system, currently engaging in services. And so it's a long line, but the by-name list will tell us who's engaged, who they're engaged with, what the interventions are, what they've done — all of that.
We're operating off of that on a weekly basis — updating that information, case conferencing and coordinating care and staffing across the county for everyone that's on the by-name list. At the same time, you have what's called the homeless management information system. And so that's the big database that translates federally across HUD for those that are in the system. That system in and of itself also then tells us at any given time, we can pull the numbers. So that you have these live numbers that say we know this many people are in the system.
And these two things work together. So that's what works for service delivery. That's what works for program design. That's what works for conversations with funders. All of those are the pieces where, I'm gonna pull back on those numbers to report out what I need to know and make the real decisions I need to make on a day-to-day basis on how we serve those currently experiencing homelessness across the county.
Do you think that these by name lists would be a better approach to determining HUD funding? Should they replace something like the point-in-time count?
CREW: So, I think that there's ways that we could do the point-in-time count differently. The point-in-time count can work in communities where homelessness is easy to understand. If I'm in Prescott, for example ... my point-in-time count works really well for me. Right? Like, because I know who those 30 individuals are that are experiencing homelessness in my community because we know like everybody knows everybody.
But when you have it where homelessness is existing in this space of complexity and has many different facets and faces and all of those pieces to it — then in that space ... Well, how do you create something that's more holistic in terms of what it takes on? I don't want to throw the baby out with the bathwater. So I don't, I don't need a whole new count, but it's to say like if we have these other tools that we're using, how is it that government officials become aware of what those numbers are? So that they're not trying to say, "Oh, well, unsheltered homelessness is down because we counted fewer of them this year."
And I'm like, "Well, excuse me, hold on, hold on. Wait a second." So, I want you to use your eyes and tell me that that unsheltered homelessness is down when you're driving under the I-17 and, and you see rows of people in the underpass. When you're driving down the 10, and you get a peek over the walls and you can see that they're lined up all across the canal, right? Like, don't tell me that unsheltered homelessness is down when I know because I can see it that it's up because it's everywhere.
