COLORADO SPRINGS — The number of people in El Paso County experiencing homelessness and staying in shelters/transitional housing hit a record this year.
The Pikes Peak Continuum of Care released the Point in Time (PIT) survey Thursday that shows the number of homeless in the region. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) requires that all CoCs conduct an annual count of people experiencing homelessness on a single night in January.
Emergency shelters and transitional housing programs collected client-level demographic information from individuals and families staying that night. The PIT is required to be conducted during the last ten-days of January, however, due to a surge of COVID-19 cases in El Paso County in January 2022 and with guidance and approval from HUD, the PPCoC elected to conduct the PIT count on the night of February 21, 2022.
According to the survey, the overall number of people experiencing homelessness went up to 1,443 people. Of that number, 1,176 people stayed in emergency shelters and transitional housing which is the highest number of sheltered people.
"Our emergency shelter numbers went up so we were seeing people access the safe emergency shelters in our community, and our overall homeless unsheltered population which are people, youth, and families living on the streets or places not used to human habitation went down this year," said Evan Caster, Senior Manager of Homeless Initiatives, Community Health Partnership.
The survey showed 396 people to be chronically homeless. This means they have been homeless for a consecutive year or longer, or have had multiple episodes of homelessness in the past three years and suffer from a disability or behavioral health or substance use disorder.
"We did see our chronic homeless number go up which is an indication that we must be focusing on the permanent housing solutions in our community which the Continuum of Care has been pushing," said Caster.
The organization along with the city are working on ways to help the homeless population.
In addition to the Point in Time survey, the Pikes Peak Continuum of Care published metrics from the county’s Homeless Management Information System and community partners such as the Colorado Department of Education and El Paso County Department of Human Services.
- Built For Zero[joinbuiltforzero.org] data from January – May 2022 identified a monthly average of 401 households with at least one veteran that were homeless and a monthly average of 358 individuals aged 15-24 that were homeless, both a 20% increase from the same reporting period in 2021.
- 9,139 unique households accessed homeless housing and service programs reported in the HMIS in 2021, a 15% increase from 2020.
- The Coordinated Entry[ppchp.org] program identified that 3,005 housing needs assessments were conducted by providers to prioritize and match households experiencing homelessness to housing vouchers in 2021, a 5% increase from 2020.
- The McKinney-Vento Program identified 1,048 students in El Paso County as experiencing homelessness during the 2020-2021 school year, an almost 50% reduction* from the 2019-2020 school year.
- The El Paso County Department of Human Services reported 4,278 households self-identified as homeless receiving SNAP/Food Assistance in February 2022, a 15% increase from February 2021 and a 40% increase from February 2019.
