Kansas counted 2,800 homeless people this year. There are likely many more.

Every year on a single night in January, hundreds of volunteers fan out in several communities across the state of Kansas to count every homeless person they encounter – on streets, in shelters, along rivers and within motel rooms.

This year, organizers counted 2,815 homeless Kansans across the state, according to numbers released Wednesday by the Kansas Statewide Homeless Coalition. This is a 6.8% increase from last year’s total of 2,636. This tally, called the point-in-time count, is important for establishing a foundation for how prevalent homelessness is in communities across the country. But it’s data gathered on one night in the dead of winter – and homelessness fluctuates throughout the year.

Wichita’s 2024 point-in-time count showed the city has at least 691 homeless people – a number lower than organizers and volunteers believe it to be.

“It’s not just 700 people. It’s 700 people that day. That gets mixed up a lot. People think we just have 700 homeless people in Wichita. And it’s just that day,” says Matt Lowe, the community impact manager for United Way of the Plains. The nonprofit is the lead agency for the  continuum of care, the local planning body coordinating housing and services funding, known as the Coalition to End Homelessness in Wichita/Sedgwick County .

Richard Patterson, a peer support specialist at Breakthrough and co-founder of the Alliance of Overlooked Neighbors , has volunteered for the count three times. He too, acknowledges the limitations of a one-day data collection.

“Three times the number is our actual homeless number, because with it being done in the dead of winter, there’s a whole lot of couch surfers. And they don’t count,” Patterson estimates. “We have, probably, at least another 100 vehicles with homeless people living in this town. The majority of those do not get counted.”

That being the case, then why does the point-in-time count matter? What does counting our homeless tell service providers? How does surveying homeless people benefit local policy?

For one day a year, there is enough street outreach to cover all of Wichita. The societal boundary between housed and homeless Wichitans diminishes, allowing community members to interact with encampments they’d otherwise ignore. The homeless are recorded with their names, ages and reasons they fell into homelessness. A baseline of knowledge is developed for the coalition to curate their services around.

“Point-in-time gives us an idea of what the gaps are and where we need to focus these resources. There’s also a housing inventory count that takes place at the same time,” Lowe says. “So if we go out and do the count and see that there’s an increasing number of unsheltered people, we’ve got to focus our resources on addressing unsheltered homelessness,” which involves a person living in a place not meant for human habitation, whether that’s a car, park or abandoned building.

“If we go out and there’s a whole lot of senior citizens, we need to go after resources to address that population,” Lowe says.

Another incentive: the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) requires communities to conduct a point-in-time count at least every other year for points in the nationwide competition for federal funding.

Cole Schnieders, the continuum of care planning manager at United Way, says that a higher prevalence of homelessness does not mean Wichita gets more federal money. Instead, HUD awards grants based on a formula that evaluates population size, how well a continuum of care does compared with others across the country and how well the continuum performs against itself.

“Are you doing better at providing services? Increasing people’s incomes? Getting them housed faster? Decreasing the overall number of people experiencing homelessness? That’s what they judge you on,” he says.

The coalition received grants of $3 million in 2023 and 2024. The money can be spent for permanent housing and case management services. It does not pay for homeless shelters.

But the count, officials say, is important for helping the community determine how to allocate scarce resources.

“I need to know how many people are out there. If I don’t know, then we can’t start the conversation,” Schnieders says. “Say this year we had more people unsheltered. That’s a problem without a fix. Without me knowing that information, we’re just going to be making up things and making up services that don’t meet actual need. That’s the last thing we should do. We don’t get enough money to play around.”

Day of the count

For Schnieders, the hours leading up to the count’s start time are “chaotic.”

“I can absolutely confirm that most of my energy spent from about 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. on point-in-time count night – I am not sleeping,” he says. “’I’m answering calls and emails. People telling me they’re too sick because they saw the weather was below 30 degrees.”

Schnieders has overseen the count for three years. He says that planning begins in September, when he rounds up a committee of continuum-of-care members and residents who volunteer to take part.

The planning committee starts by building consensus on how the count should be conducted, as the federal housing department provides continuums a plethora of acceptable options for it. For 2024, the committee decided to keep the process the same as the previous two years.

“Because every time you change either one aspect of your count, you get vastly different results. It’s a science experiment right?” Schnieders says.

At 5 a.m., the first batch of volunteers went out into the dark. Usually, Schnieders says, the early morning groups are employees of the Veterans Administration.

By the time daylight peeked over the horizon, coordinators and volunteers swarmed United Methodist Open Door, this year’s starting point. Throngs of Wichitans came through the doors donning colorful vests with several drawstring bags hoisted on their shoulders. These bags, branded with United Way’s logo, contained hygiene items and resource guides – thank you gifts for those surveyed.

Eight a.m. is when the next groups went out, on task until noon. Any reports of a new encampment or other concerns went directly to Schnieder’s cell.

Patterson, a three-time volunteer, leans on his lived experience when surveying encampments. He was homeless for six years, living on the streets of Wichita.

He said he began volunteering for the count because he saw it as an opportunity to further his advocacy for homeless people.

“I start out with ‘Hey, I’ve been in your spot. I was on the street for six years. This is the way to get you off the streets and get you into housing. If we don’t count you, you’re not in the system. If you’re not in the system, you’re gonna still be out here,’” Patterson says.

The “system” Patterson refers to is the homeless management information system (HMIS) that is accessed by all agencies in the coalition, including city housing. United Way manages the system. When someone experiencing homelessness meets with a service provider, they are added to the system. Once registered, agencies can follow a person’s path toward housing and wraparound services, such as employment and medical care.

Roger Dickinson also uses his lived experience as an advantage during the count. He spent three and half years “literally homeless” on the streets of Wichita. Before that, he said, he was couch surfing, staying with friends and family.

He’s volunteered twice for the count and views it as outreach.

“I like socializing with people and giving people security that way. I also think that for as effective or ineffective as it (the count) is, it’s a good way for me to get to know the people on the street,” he says. “Let them know that I’m doing what I can. I like them to know that I’m working for them too.”

Law enforcement officers across the county pitch in as well. Police forces outside Wichita survey their known homeless residents. In Wichita, the Police Department’s Homeless Outreach Team surveys those in high-risk areas and checks out abandoned buildings.

Wichita operates its count from 5 a.m. to noon in one day – with the capability to go longer if necessary. HUD allows a count to take as long as a week.

Schnieders said he’s dissuaded from using that method because the results could get murky.

“You can do a service-based count. So, you do whatever your methodology is and then for the next seven days, you will be asking people, ‘Where did you say on the night of the 25th?’ The farther you get from that date, the less chance that people can be able to identify where they were that night, because it becomes a blur when you got trauma on the street,” he says.

Schnieders does admit that the count’s predawn start time is less than ideal for recruiting volunteers and for engaging the homeless, who are often asleep. He plans to discuss a later start time with the planning committee this fall.

Sedgwick County does a blitz count and a known-places count, meaning that the coalition identifies where people who are unsheltered are located at night and sends surveyors there, while also canvassing different areas at the same time to avoid double counting. Schnieders says that the theory behind this method is that if areas are counted simultaneously, it reduces the chance of duplicates while covering as much ground as possible.

Technically, he says, “from the night that we’re allowed to do the count, we can count for seven days following that. In our community and all the other communities in Kansas, we don’t do that. It gets really complicated managing that data.”

Locations where homeless people tend to gather – listings provided by the Homeless Outreach Team and other outreach groups – are a priority.

“We go to every park in Wichita, Sedgwick County. In Wichita we go to every single underpass. We always try to go to gas stations just in case,” Schnieders says.

Assumptions must be discarded when it comes to the point-in-time count. One could stand in a neighborhood park and not see a single tree – “not a place that any of us who have been doing this for longer than a day think that someone’s going to camp there” – but they’ll send volunteers anyway.

Last year’s count drew 80 volunteers. This year, that number grew to a remarkable 138 volunteers.

“It’s on people’s minds. A lot of people are concerned about homelessness, and I think that’s frankly a good thing,” Schnieders says. “The more people who are engaged in learning about the issue and do the point-in-time count, you are faced with the reality of homelessness that you will not see doing a lot of other types of volunteer work.”

After the count, United Way collects the hundreds of surveys and forwards them to a team of data analysts.

Cleaning the data is necessary to avoid duplication. In a spot at Kellogg and Topeka, for instance, three individuals were counted. When the surveys at the spot were reviewed, those surveys had exactly the same demographic information. Schnieders and his team concluded that was likely the same person moving around the street corner, so the clean data reflected one individual.

“If there was any question at all, we would leave them in,” Lowe says. “There’s always a likelihood of there being a duplicate person who gets in there. But there’s also a likelihood that we miss people that could count.”

Point-in-time’s count goes beyond the numbers

Police Officer Nate Schwiethale of the Homeless Outreach Team is a veteran volunteer of the count. He volunteered as a surveyor before his team existed and was part of Wichita’s inaugural point-in-time count in 2009.

It was less than ideal then.

“I was out in Derby in a cornfield,” Schwiethale says. Back then, surveyors were assigned a mile to cover everywhere in the county, regardless of known homeless populations. Schwiethale says he’s thrilled with how Wichita’s count has grown more sophisticated.

He adds that the count is also increasing in relevance, reflected in more residents offering to volunteer and other types of buy-in when it comes to local homelessness policy.

“You’re seeing business owners that are wanting to get involved,” he says, pointing to OneRise campus, a $400 million-dollar property with acreage donated by a local real estate company, as an example. “We didn’t see that years ago. We just had churches. Not even the city was involved.

“Now the city’s forking over money and pulling money from sales of houses and using that money towards building the MAC (the proposed multiagency campus and center). I just had a meeting with QuikTrip – they want to fund and expand our Homeless Outreach Team. These are things that have never happened before.”

Schnieders sees the point-in-time count as an opportunity for maximum-impact street outreach.

“What I’ve seen from other communities is they find that people who go into services and they’re already known to the system,” he says. “Whereas the population that I’m concerned about counting is the people who may not access services very regularly throughout the winter. That’s why we have to do as much coverage as possible.”

This year, thanks to the increase in volunteers, Sedgwick County surveyors were able to cover 70 more square miles than last year.

That expanded coverage helps service providers like Schnieders to see the big picture. What demographic is trending more in homelessness? Where are people going for safety? Is there enough housing for every person that needs it?

Schwiethale thinks that more community members are participating because they’re now seeing themselves as part of the solution to reducing homelessness.

“I think it’s because when you start talking about the numbers of homelessness, you see the rise in other communities like San Francisco, and they don’t want that here,” he says. “They want to get involved. I think it’s been a good thing from that perspective. Addressing homelessness isn’t just a United Way issue. It’s not a one-person issue. It’s a community issue.”

The uncounted

At its best the count can provide an overall look at homelessness, but details can be elusive.

In previous years, canvassers couldn’t record observations of a homeless person or encampment without speaking with them, a limitation that could lower a count’s total. This year, volunteers had the option to record an observation of someone in an encampment, taking down their approximate age and other identifying features. Observation surveys were also used to count people who did not wish to take the survey but were likely experiencing homelessness the night before.

Volunteers say many of the homeless they tried to survey were sleeping, or they would announce their presence at an encampment but no one would answer. If a volunteer could see an individual, they were allowed to record them as observed.

But when volunteers found encampments with multiple tents or makeshift structures but no one in sight, no record would be made of the encampment or the people presumed to be living there.

Both Patterson and Dickinson say they never got counted while they were homeless. Patterson says he wasn’t because he was a meticulous hider.

“I knew the reason I wasn’t counted is because I was so hidden that nobody could find me,” he says. “I lived in a park. I’ve got a long background of camping and Boy Scouts, so I actually cut other branches weaved in to cover the entrance. You had to get about five feet from the actual entrance (to notice it), and it was camouflaged.”

Dickinson says he was never approached by a surveyor but there’s a chance he was counted while taking shelter at Open Door.

Regardless if he was counted or not, he knows the totals during the time he was homeless weren’t comprehensive.

“Realistically, you can’t pick one day out of the year and say ‘OK, this is how many homeless people were on the streets this year,’” he says. “I see people come and go all the time. There’s quite a few people who are consistently on the street, but it’s a case-by-case thing. It’s a revolving door.”

Schwiethale, the outreach officer, says thousands of people experience homelessness in Wichita.

“If you look at our HMIS system, and it varies from year to year, but we’ll roughly see 3,000 homeless go into homelessness throughout the year,” he says. “That’s 3,000 new names entered into the system because maybe in January, Joe wasn’t homeless but then in February, he is. Well, he’s still homeless during that year.”

Believing the homeless

The survey Wichita used asks people if mental health or substance use is the reason for the lack of stable housing or if they’re fleeing domestic violence. Continuums are required to collect information about serious mental illnesses, substance use disorders and HIV/AIDs, according to Schnieders. However, there is little incentive for someone to spill their truth to a total stranger.

Patterson, a recovering alcoholic, says that being honest about what limits a person from finding stable housing is tough but necessary. When he was added to the homeless management information system, he was able to get connected to the right resources to find sobriety and, eventually, housing and full-time employment.

“The more truthful you are with your answers, the more that it can help you,” Patterson says.

Schnieders said the planning committee debates over the inclusion of this part of the survey every year.

“We understand that this is a very personal, very invasive feeling. What would it feel like if someone knocked on your headboard and started asking, ‘Are you on drugs or not?’ It’s a very rough question. ‘Have you ever been sexually assaulted?’ I can’t answer that question to a complete stranger,” he says.

He explained that answers to such personal questions determine whether a person has a “disability,” but people’s honesty is assumed. HUD tells surveyors to believe whatever a person says during their interview. So, even if a volunteer knows that their interviewee has a history of substance use but denies it, the volunteer should document the denial.

Interested in what homeless people in Sedgwick County were asked during the count? Read the survey questions here.

Dickinson says he believes those questions can be damaging because they stigmatize and lump vulnerable people into harmful categories.

“A lot of homeless people are untrusting of people in homeless services. When you’re living outside, distanced from society, cut off from society, all you see all day is people glaring at you. They’re not living easy lives,” he says.

“So when you come into their domain and start asking pointed questions like that, it just kind of heightens their mistrust. We need to relate to them somehow. Just let it be a point-in-time count. I don’t think we should categorize them any further. I think that’s part of the problem: We’re trying to solve too many issues at the same time.”

‘We all know what the problem is. Solving it is a whole different ballgame.’

When communities look at point-in-time count data, they might walk away with a number emblazoned in their mind. 691 – that’s how many homeless Wichita has. Or, more likely, 3,000 going in and out of homelessness, as Schwiethale says. And across the state of Kansas? At least 2,800 more.

What service providers, volunteers, advocates and those experiencing homelessness want others to understand is the people represented by the number. How they became homeless, what prevents them from attaining housing, what age group is trending as more vulnerable, what it’s like to be in a constant state of survival and still need to be documented in order to get help.

“If people see that number and kind of point their nose in the air, that’s not really helping anything,” Dickinson says. “If they have a true concern over that number, then get involved in the solution and quit pointing at the problem. We all know what the problem is. Solving it is a whole different ballgame.”

Schnieders hopes that the count’s one-day action expands to a year-round community commitment to addressing homelessness. Volunteers are ticking up, so maybe solution-oriented people are too.

“It energizes communities to see that homelessness is something they can get involved in,” he says. “It’s impacting their neighbors and people they may know. I’ve had many people encounter someone on the street that they went to high school with. That’s kind of earth-shattering: to see someone you used to run circles with.”

And yes, the data collection isn’t perfect. But it can be enough to push forward policy. It gives hope to solving a growing problem.

“For one day of the year, we have enough street outreach to cover all of Wichita. We are seeing everyone experiencing unsheltered homelessness who don’t have either the capacity – because it’s hard to get into some places – or the trust to go to a service provider for services,” Schnieders says.

“The count gives us a look to what a future looks like where we have an appropriate amount of resources in our industry where we could build those relationships.”

Without the data, the resources and commitment, that tally of 691 will only move in one direction.

“That number is going to continue to go up,” Dickinson says. “We’re operating at full capacity at the moment. We don’t have the systems in place yet to be 100% effective at what we’re doing.”

The post Kansas counted 2,800 homeless people this year. There are likely many more. appeared first on KLC Journal - A Civic Issues Magazine from the Kansas Leadership Center