Homeless Populations Won't Be Counted In Many Areas In 2021 - NPR

Tents of homeless people line a street in Washington, D.C., in April.

Tents of homeless people line a street in Washington, D.C., in April.

Every January, in the middle of the night, thousands of volunteers and outreach workers spread out across the country to count the nation's homeless population.

But this year, because of the pandemic, the annual street count has been canceled or modified in hundreds of communities, even as the nation's unsheltered population appears to be growing?

"Given everything that's happened with COVID, we took a pretty hard evaluation of what it was going to take to do the unsheltered count in particular," said Heidi Marston, executive director of the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority.

Last year, LA County found more than 48,000 people living outside.

Like other communities, the county also still plans to count those who reside in homeless shelters and temporary housing.

Still, that leaves a big hole in the nation's understanding of its unsheltered population, a number that's grown steadily since 2015.

"Foregoing the count means that we're going to miss a pretty crucial data point," said Dennis Culhane of the University of Pennsylvania, who has helped the government gather and analyze information about homelessness for years.

Culhane said such information is important, especially when it comes to getting money from Congress for homeless assistance programs.

Sandor hopes the need to scale back this year's count will provide an opportunity for the country to find a better way to collect more up-to-date information in the future