A Point In Time (PIT) Count of people living in temporary housing and unsheltered on the streets was held in January this year and the results were released a couple weeks ago. It was the first “complete” count since before covid. During the pandemic counts were only done in emergency shelters and transitional housing and mostly by phone to their offices, but no counts of unhoused people were done to avoid infections. The radical changes in housing that came about because of covid are known about, including eviction moratoriums and the ways they were often ignored by major realty companies. Now that the moratoriums have been lifted, and most rental assistance ended, the expectation is that more people have been forced out of their homes.
That seems to be reflected in the numbers from the NWA PIT Count with a small but not inconsequential rise in the counts.
Note that PIT counts are generally assumed to be under-counts since it’s difficult to know who of the unsheltered population was missed on the date of the count. In addition, the count is fully voluntary, and homeless people are sometimes reluctant to talk to official looking people with devices or clipboards who might cause them trouble. If they say “no” they aren’t counted.
What can the count tell us about who the people are living along our trails and back in our woods? Here are a few of the numbers from the early reports:
436 individuals
38 Veterans
59% male
39% female
2% transgender
6% LGBTQIA
72% white (local population 86%)
8% Hispanic (local population 16%)
16% African American (local population is 3%)
4% Indigenous (local population is 3%)
5% Pacific Islander (local population 2%)
3% are more than one race
By HUD’s definition there are 63 children under 18 out there somewhere. 46 of them aged out of the foster care system. Remember that this is the count from the PIT. HUD (who sponsors the PIT Count) has a limited definition of “homeless”. The school system also tracks homeless youth. Their definition is more pragmatic, and their homeless count is much higher. You’ll see that down below.
There are 200 people age 35-54, and 67 people over 55 who would rather be thinking about retirement than bare survival. 15 of those are over 65.
33% are domestic abuse survivors. 20% are from the foster care system. 41% have a felony conviction (making them ineligible for most assistance), and 28% have an eviction on their record that makes it hard to qualify for most housing.
An interesting point is that 115 are chronically homeless, but 128 are experiencing homelessness for the first time. That number is nearly twice as high as the last count in 2020. 47% have one or more disabilities… nearly half.
Here are some trends over time from the PIT Count. See how the numbers dipped in 2021-22 when only the emergency and transitional shelter populations were counted:
And here are trends over time from the school district numbers. You’ll see they’re very different. “Doubled up” means temporarily staying with somebody, safety level unknown.
Notice how the Unaccompanied Youth – no family – went from 50 in 2020 to 103 this year? Pretty alarming, isn’t it? What happened to those families?
We aren’t a big city with thousands of struggling unhoused, fortunately. If we had a plan, our problems could be manageable. Unfortunately we don’t have a plan. When city officials have been asked “where are these people supposed to go?” the response multiple times was a vacant “I don’t know.” There are some nonprofit groups working on ideas, including Omni Center, but nothing ready to relieve the crisis we’re up against right now.
And it is a crisis. Across the country cities are facing dilemmas similar and worse than ours, affecting low income people everywhere. Some though are addressing the problems in much more effective ways than any of the cities in Northwest Arkansas. You’ll be hearing more about this in this newsletter. Please keep reading.
If you have experience with homelessness, or camps or people in your neighborhood are experiencing homelessness and you’d like to talk about solutions, please drop a note to omni@omnicenter.org to be included in future conversations that will be coming up. Since we’re all in this together it’s time to do something positive.