TUCSON, Ariz. — About 400 Arizonans spent their morning interviewing those sleeping on the streets of Pima County. About 40 groups, each armed with a stack of surveys and McDonald's gift cards gathered data for the county Point in Time Count.
The Point in Time—or PIT— Count is a requirement from the Federal Department of Housing and Urban Development for jurisdiction that receive Federal Continuum of Care Funding.
The Tucson Pima Collaboration to End Homelessness runs the count in Pima County. Last year, they found 2,218 people sleeping either on the streets or in shelters.
While across the country, homelessness rose by about 18%, Pima County only saw a just over 5% rise.
City of Tucson Continuum of Care Team Manager Kat Davis says numbers have been pretty steady in the county since 2022 after seeing a huge jump following COVID-19 shutdowns.
"We've done really great work as a system to expand housing, and people have moved into shelter off of the streets, by and large," she said. "So we've seen our unsheltered numbers decrease and our sheltered numbers increase."
Some Tucson-area non-profits and activists have raised concern about the count, saying the numbers aren't accurate to what they see day-to-day.
Davis acknowledges that, saying that the count isn't designed to give an exact number but instead to provide another data point for agencies to use to identify trends and to give a number they can report to the Federal government.
"We know that this is a snapshot of one picture, one night," she said. "We do our best to count as many people as we can and to get a good idea of what's happening with people experiencing homelessness, but we also know that not everyone wants to be approached, not everyone wants to be found."
The results a few months after the count.
