TUCSON, Ariz. — City of Tucson leaders say they're encouraged by the results of 2025's Point in Time (PIT) count report that the Tucson Pima Collaboration to End Homelessness (TPCH) released Monday.
The PIT count is an annual tally of those experiencing homelessness— both in shelters and on the streets— in Pima County.
On January 29, 400 volunteers spent about 5 hours gathering survey responses across the county.
The results showed an increase in homelessness overall in the county with a decrease in unsheltered homelessness for the third year in a row.
“This is data that is proving that the programs that we’ve created for people are working,” said Mayor Regina Romero, citing Tucson's affordable housing and Housing First programs that connect people with housing before moving to other resources.
But some Tucsonans active in homeless services through nonprofits or mutual aid groups are seeing different numbers in the their work.
Executive Director of StandUp for Kids Tucson Kim Sisson is one of those Tucsonans.
StandUp for Kids works with homeless or at-risk youth and young adults under 24 years old, connecting them with support and resources.
Since January, her team has reported 400 interactions with young people living on the streets and 66 individuals getting support in their Midtown center. The PIT count reported 62 people 24 years old and younger living in unsheltered homelessness with 316 counted in total. That's a 32% decrease from 2024's count.
“It’s a challenging population to count," Sisson said. "A lot of times they don’t think they’re homeless. If you had a family here and you said ‘are you homeless?’ you’d say ‘I’ve got a family, I’m just not going there.' So, a lot of it is the way we’re questioning, a lot of it is what we’re asking.”
She says young people living on the streets in unsheltered homelessness are often cautious of strangers like many of the volunteers in the count, and survey topics like gender identity and history of abuse can be uncomfortable topics to discuss with strangers.
Romero says she has confidence in the data reported, understanding that there are some people who do slip through the count.
“This is not counting the number of individuals that are couch-surfing," she said. "There’s no possible way of counting those numbers. What we count is the people that we find unsheltered.”
She's inviting mutual aid groups to join the PIT count in the coming years to continue to improve the accuracy.
“You all know where our unsheltered communities are." She said "Come and help. Be part of the solution."
