While overall methodology will remain the same as in years past, there will be changes to procedures and protocols due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Outreach teams will be comprised solely of staff from the Coalition and The Way Home agencies; no community volunteers will participate. Other COVID-19 safety measures include the use of personal protective equipment (PPE); the forgoing of large, centralized staging locations; and the use of digital rather than physical maps.

“In spite of the pandemic, we have decided it is important to conduct the Count — perhaps even more so this year because we want to know how COVID has impacted homelessness and because we want to be able to measure results of the Community COVID Housing Program,” said Michael Nichols, President/CEO of the Coalition for the Homeless.

The annual Count provides a snapshot of homelessness on a single night in Harris, Fort Bend, and Montgomery counties. The Coalition has conducted the Count at the same time and in the same way for the past several years in order to identify trends in homelessness year-over-year. Because of changes enacted to protect the health and safety of all parties involved, the results of the 2021 Count may not be directly comparable to those of years past.

“The Count will still give us an understanding of how The Way Home Continuum of Care, our local homeless response system, is performing — even in an ongoing global pandemic,” said Nichols. “We will use these insights to inform both our overall strategy and COVID-19 response moving forward.”

While it is not known how many people in the region have fallen or will fall into homelessness due to the pandemic and resulting economic downturn, the Coalition recently partnered with the City of Houston and Harris County to create the Community COVID Housing Program (CCHP). The CCHP proposes to accelerate the work of the local homeless response system to quickly and permanently house approximately 5,000 people by 2022 to keep our most vulnerable neighbors safe and healthy and to build a more resilient community. (To read more about the CCHP, please access the press release here.)

As in years past, the PIT Count will be divided into two parts to identify sheltered and unsheltered persons. The data for the sheltered portion of the Count is collected on a single night, January 19, which is the official “night of record” for this year’s Count. The unsheltered portion of the Count will take place January 20-22 and January 25-29. Over the course of those eight days, outreach teams will conduct brief, conversational surveys with people on the street to confirm that they were unsheltered on the night of January 19 and to document their housing needs. Outreach teams will also offer Coordinated Access Housing Assessments on the spot to people interviewed, including veterans, families, and youth/young adults experiencing homelessness and people experiencing chronic homelessness.

The annual Homeless Count is a HUD requirement for the local Continuum of Care (CoC) funding process, which brought more than $41 million in Fiscal Year 2019 to multiple homeless assistance programs in Harris, Fort Bend, and Montgomery counties. As lead agency to The Way Home, the Coalition for the Homeless coordinates the community application for this funding each year. Funds received are distributed to homeless service partners to provide permanent housing, outreach, and supportive services to people experiencing homelessness. 

Results from the 2021 Count will help in tracking the progress of The Way Home’s ongoing collaborative efforts between local service agencies. The Count results also: help the Coalition and partner agency outreach teams in learning where people are sleeping for continued outreach throughout the year, illuminate specific demographic and programmatic gaps, and provide additional information needed to solve chronic homelessness and continue to improve the region’s homeless response system. 

During the 2021 Count, hundreds of The Way Home partner agency staff will depart from various locations across Harris, Fort Bend, and Montgomery counties rather than a centralized staging location in order to protect the health and safety of all participants. Media should contact Madison Mann, madison@theckpgroup.com, to request photos and b-roll or to secure phone or video-call interviews during the weeks of the Count. 

For more information and for results of previous years’ counts, please click here.