The Missouri Association for Social Welfare (MASW) on Wednesday of last week conducted its annual summer Point in Time count, which is designed to document the number of people who qualify as homeless in the 101 Missouri counties that comprise the Balance of State Continuum of Care (BoS CoC).
The count is orchestrated locally by the Texas County Food Pantry and carried out by several local agencies, organizations and individuals.
Pantry director Bennie Cook said that 30 people qualified as homeless in this summer’s count, including 20 adults and 10 children. That’s a significant drop from last July’s tally, which tabbed 48 homeless, including 29 adults and 19 children.
The current survey documented five families living in cars, four at a campground, and three on the street, while one family was “doubled-up,” or living under another family’s roof. Information was gathered by observation of the subjects, or by face-to-face interview. All documented homeless in the county fell into the “unsheltered” category.
The United States Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) defines unsheltered homeless as “an individual or family who lacks a fixed, regular and adequate nighttime residence, meaning: Sleeping in a place not designed for or ordinarily used as a regular sleeping accommodation, including a car, park, abandoned building, bus or train station, airport, camping ground, or other place not meant for human habitation.” “Sheltered” data is gathered from social service agencies and organizations providing emergency shelter, safe haven, transitional housing, or honoring hotel/motel vouchers paid for by charitable organizations.
The local PIT count only documents unsheltered homeless people, primarily because the county lacks organized shelters for homeless people.
The idea behind the semi-annual PIT counts (another happens each January) is to estimate how much funding is needed for assistance of homeless, and to simply identify who needs it. The Pantry received a grant this year from the state of Missouri to help provide shelter to the homeless and others who meet income guidelines, and also utilizes Salvation Army funds.
Cook figures drought conditions played a role in this summer’s lower totals.
“Because of the heat, I think more people are doubled-up with friends and relatives and not admitting to being homeless,” he said.
Data gathered by the MASW in July 2011 indicated that there were 2113 homeless people within the 54 BoS CoC counties that submitted survey information. Of those, 713 were categorized as unsheltered and 1,400 as sheltered.
MASW data from 2011 showed that unsheltered people were 52-percent male and 33-percent female (with 15-percent unknown), while unsheltered were 52-percent female and 48 percent male.
Texas County is in the BoS CoC’s nine-county Region 8. Last July’s survey indicated that the region had 214 homeless people, 135 unsheltered and 79 sheltered.
In order of frequency, the MASW’s list of reasons for homelessness last summer included substance abuse and domestic violence, followed by lack of income, loss of income, kicked out of house, stranded/transient, mental illness, and past incarceration. Other contributing factors included divorce, foreclosure and eviction.
A report released in January by the National Alliance to End Homelessness (a federation of public, private and nonprofit organizations) stated that an estimated total of more than 646,000 people in the United States experienced homelessness on a given night in 2011.
For more information about homelessness in Missouri and Texas County, log onto http://www.mo-ich.org/14.html.