Homelessness declines slightly from last year
The number of homeless people in the Houston area dipped slightly from last year, according to preliminary data from an annual count. The decline of just less than 6 percent represents more progress in an effort that has cut homelessness by 60 percent since 2011, but the drop is less than others in recent years.
Marilyn Brown, CEO of the regional coalition to fight homelessness, said the data shows the focus on permanent housing with supportive services is working. However, Brown warned that federal cuts in housing vouchers could cripple this year’s effort.
The annual census, conducted over four days in January, found 3,412 people in Houston, Harris County and Fort Bend County who qualified as homeless, which means they did not have “a fixed, regular and adequate nighttime residence.”
The 2017 preliminary total comes in 5.9 percent below last year’s count of 3,626 and fully 60 percent below the baseline count in 2011, when there were 8,538 people homeless in the same area.
The umbrella organization that coordinates the region’s efforts, the Coalition for the Homeless, published the preliminary data Monday in a news release. A full report with finalized data broken down by area and by sheltered status is expected in late May or early June.
Housing professionals, service providers and volunteers fanned out in mid-January to shelters, service sites, encampments and other areas to count the region’s homeless as accu-
rately as possible. The census is part of the region’s integrated effort called The Way Home, which has drawn praise and attention nationally.
Focus on housing
This year’s count for the first time surveyed parts of Montgomery County, but those numbers are not included in the preliminary total, so the numbers cover the same geographical area and offer an apples-to-apples comparison, said Sara Brown, communications manager for the coalition.
“The Way Home has been focused on permanent housing with supportive services as the key to solving homelessness, and data shows that this strategy is working,” Brown said. “Since the system’s transformation work of The Way Home began in 2012, more than 11,200 chronically homeless individuals, veterans and individuals in families have been placed into permanent housing.”
However, Brown warned in her statement, an abrupt loss of federal housing dollars could hamstring the effort this year — cutting the number of chronically homeless people the coalition can house each month by 60 percent. The network of public and private agencies was on track to house 500 more chronically homeless people by September, as Mayor Sylvester Turner had requested as part of his plan to reduce homelessness while addressing public complaints about panhandling and encampments, which have increased in recent years.
A separate issue
During the debate about an ordinance that restricts panhandling, Houston City Council member Mike Knox submitted police data showing that complaints about panhandlers nearly doubled between 2015 and 2016, from 783 to 1,548. That ordinance, along with its twin law that restricts camping in public, face a court challenge from three homeless Houstonians represented by the ACLU of Texas.
However, homeless advocates and others point out that panhandlers are not necessarily homeless and say the two problems are distinct.
“The panhandling thing is actually a separate issue,” Knox said last week. “It’s creating an environment of fear, and it’s also not safe for the people doing it.”