Photo credit: Austin Hornbostel/Journal-World
Members of a Point-in-Time Body Count team accompanied by the Journal-World entered a campsite in a wooded area near the intersection of Eighth Avenue and Delaware Street in East Lawrence on Thursday, Jan. 25, 2024.
Housing advocates are looking back at data from a homelessness survey conducted earlier this year, hoping that this snapshot of information, which includes questions about where respondents are from, will help them focus their outreach efforts and address broader issues.
As the Journal-World reported, Douglas County’s Point-in-Time Survey, a data survey required by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, found that 414 people were homeless in the county as of the night it was surveyed, up 18% from last year.
The HUD survey is required by state agencies every year to understand how many homeless people (sheltered or not) are in a community on a given night in January. While it’s an interesting data point, experts say it doesn’t paint a complete picture because the survey often asks personal questions and people can choose not to participate.
Misty Bosch Hastings, director of Lawrence’s Homeless Solutions Division, said the local numbers were in line with what she expected.
Bosch Hastings said she believed the organisation that carried out the investigation had done a “robust” investigation.
Kristen Egan, Douglas County regional coordinator for the Kansas Coalition for the Homeless, was part of the team that helped conduct this year’s Point-in-Time (PIT) count.
“I think our community wants to have a complete clarity of what’s going on,” Egan said.
Eric Arganbright, director of community engagement for the Kansas Coalition for the Homeless, said his organization conducts PIT surveys in 101 of the state’s 105 counties, forcing it to do things differently than other Continuum of Care groups in the state.
For example, Sedgwick, Shawnee and Johnson county groups are each conducting their own counts; Wyandotte County is coordinating its count with a group in Jackson County, Missouri, as part of the Kansas City count; and Douglas County is not doing a joint count.
Arganbright said the team does a better job counting each year and gets better data, in part because of the increased number of volunteers they get.
This year, volunteers asked additional questions beyond those required by HUD, including how long people have been homeless and how long they have lived in the county.
Of those experiencing homelessness in Douglas County, 289 reported being homeless for 12 months or more, representing about 70 percent of respondents. Of those, 212 reported being homeless for a year or more.
Egan said the team added a question to track whether people are moving to different neighborhoods, a question that could help determine whether people in Lawrence are falling into homelessness and, if so, help advocates find ways to prevent such situations.
Bosch Hastings cited an interesting data point, that 17% of respondents were employed, highlighting that housing costs are too high and that more affordable housing is needed.
“A living wage in Lawrence is like $21 an hour,” Bosch Hastings said. “To live in a studio apartment here, you can’t just get a minimum wage job, you have to have three minimum wage jobs.”
Bosch-Hastings said her team is using the data to expand homeless outreach, including helping people assess barriers to housing, such as not knowing how to apply for different services, like mental health or drug help. The city also registers individuals in its Homeless Management Information System, making it easier for caseworkers to follow up.
Mayor Bosch Hastings acknowledged there are no easy solutions to ending homelessness and that there are limits and balances to what the city can do.
The homeless camp behind the Amtrak station in East Lawrence is expected to close by mid-October, and city officials are working with individuals staying there to help them transition into more permanent housing, the city said in a news release Friday.
Bosch Hastings said increasing shelter capacity has been a priority over the past year. The city had just 25 shelter beds available as of 2023. Now, the city’s bed capacity has grown to 125, an effort bolstered by the Lawrence Community Shelter’s community of pallet cabins, called “The Village,” which opened earlier this year.
But as all the experts reiterated, the PIT count is just one piece of the puzzle to help people facing homelessness. Despite the count’s productivity and interesting data, Shaylin Ursh, director of homeless management information systems for the Kansas Homeless Coalition, said there is still work to be done for the rest of the year.
“We’re doing other reports to tell the (story) of the remaining 364 days,” Ursch said.
