Last week, 14 Miriam’s Kitchen staff members, and many of our supporters, joined DC’s Annual Point in Time Count, canvassing Foggy Bottom, the National Mall, and Adams Morgan between 9 pm and 1 am with an eye out for people sleeping outside.
To learn more about our perspective on DC’s Point in Time Count, check out this interview on WAMU and this piece in the Washington Post!
What’s the Point in Time Count?
Every year, on a single night during the last week in January, cities across the country conduct the Point-in-Time (PIT) Count, an annual census that tracks how many people are experiencing homelessness and who they are.
Why does it matter?
At Miriam’s Kitchen, our mission is to end chronic homelessness and we can best do this when we have a solid understanding of the problem before us. The PIT Count is one of several tools that help us do this. It helps us to understand how many people in our city are experiencing homelessness, and to assess progress over time. Because the census is conducted nationwide, we learn from national trends and differences between jurisdictions.
However, the census shows us more than numbers – it gives us information about the people behind them. Through demographic data like age, gender, race, and sexual orientation, the PIT can shed light on who is experiencing homelessness – and whether that is changing over time.
Finally, data collected during the PIT count can help us to understand different experiences of homelessness. For example, how many members of our community have been experiencing homelessness for years? How many are experiencing homelessness as a family? How many have entered homelessness directly following release from jail or prison? How many are naming domestic violence as a factor in their homelessness, and so on?
It’s not perfect
The PIT count is just that – a collection of data from just one point in time. This means it shows us a snapshot of our homelessness crisis. The numbers collected during the count will change over the course of the year. In addition, the count can be largely impacted by things like weather which impact whether people are staying outside or in shelter. Therefore, we take the results with a grain of salt, knowing that a particularly cold or warm year might skew the results in a certain direction.
It’s also important to remember that the census won’t count everyone experiencing homelessness. It misses the people that will become homeless throughout the year just as it counts people who may resolve their homelessness tomorrow. It misses those experiencing unsheltered homelessness who are not visible to volunteers. In addition, we may be undercounting entire subsets of our homeless population. Youth experiencing homelessness, for example, often do not stay outside or in shelters and instead are more likely to couch surf or stay with friends, which means they may be disproportionately undercounted in this annual census.
What’s next?
While the PIT results will be released by the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments (MWCOG) and the national Annual Homelessness Assessment Report (AHAR) this coming Spring, we already know what’s happening in our community and what’s needed to end homelessness!
Thanks to the leadership of those with lived experience of homelessness, Miriam’s Kitchen’s deep understanding of the needs of our community, the vast expertise of our coalition (The Way Home Campaign), data from DC’s Coordinated Assessment and Housing Placement (CAHP) system, and modeling conducted through DC’s strategic plan to end homelessness, we know what it will take to end homelessness in DC!
Stay tuned for the next post in this blog series to learn exactly what is needed in the city’s budget to end homelessness and how you can help urge Mayor Bowser to make investments where they’re needed most!
