How Covid-19 changed the way Pinellas County measured homelessness

On a winter night in 2020, around 800 people slept outside in Pinellas County. 

The Homelessness Leadership Alliance of Pinellas reports these numbers every year. How does it get them? People count.

Caravans of volunteers scour the peninsula every January, searching for homeless community members to identify, survey and mark into a dataset. But in 2021, Covid-19 restrictions made this count impossible. 

The Point-in-Time, or PIT, count, is an annual survey the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) requires for U.S. counties receiving federal grants to combat homelessness.

By designating local organizations to conduct these surveys, the HUD receives a rough estimate of how many people are experiencing homelessness nationwide, as well as detailed answers to questionnaires that help identify trends and demographics in homeless communities.

The Homelessness Leadership Alliance of Pinellas oversees the local PIT count every year, and submits a report to the HUD. Its chief operating officer, Susan Finlaw-Dusseault, says many other organizations rely on this data as well.

Jeri Flannagan, director of development for Boley Centers, a local housing advocacy group, explained that her organization uses PIT-count data to ask for funding, especially when submitting requests to the Veterans Association.

“Having good data gets you the points you need in order to get the money,” she explained. But this year was different.

The Leadership alliance typically uses two counts to compile its PIT data: the sheltered count and the unsheltered count. The unsheltered count is when the volunteer caravans conduct head counts and ask people experiencing homelessness to fill out questionnaires on the street.

By canvassing homeless hotspots with these questions, volunteers learn people’s names, ages and social security numbers, as well as where they sleep, if they were evicted and other detailed personal information. These surveys contribute to the federal government’s understanding of homelessness and helps drive policy.

According to Finlaw-Dusseault, detailed information from the PIT questionnaires also help the Leadership Alliance identify trends locally.

“The last couple years, we’ve been keeping a real close eye on the racial disparities that we’re seeing in the data,” Finlaw-Dusseault said. “We have several committees that are made up of policymakers and providers … so that data is looked at extensively.”

But the Leadership Alliance gained permission from the HUD to omit the unsheltered count in Pinellas County’s 2021 PIT report, because Covid-19 restrictions prevented the in-person contact that is necessary for connecting with people on the street.

This left holes in the 2021 PIT data, and Finlaw-Dusseault says her organization will probably not publish this year’s report online. Generally, the Leadership Alliance publishes the PIT report every April, alongside a professional analysis from outsourced staticians. Since this year’s data is spottier than usual, it’s choosing not to.

But the Leadership Alliance has submitted the PIT report to the HUD with data compiled from only the sheltered count, which is based off of the Homeless Management Information System (HMIS), a dataset shared by multiple organizations.

As people come and go through homeless shelters, administrators log their names and other personal information into the HMIS. The Leadership Alliance used this data alone to submit the 2021 PIT report, but included a rough estimate of how many unsheltered people live in Pinellas County based off of the same dataset, with guidance from the HUD.

Brian Leaply, HMIS system administrator for the Leadership Alliance, says he worked directly with the HUD to determine the best way to compile this data and estimate the unsheltered numbers. He claims the modified PIT count will not affect how the HUD or the Leadership Alliance understand, interpret or support Pinellas County’s unhoused community. 

Part of this is because even the normal count is imperfect. It’s called a point-in-time count because the numbers only reflect the amount of homeless people there are on the single night it’s conducted. Between these dates, the numbers fluctuate. 

But without the in-person questionnaires and the more accurate headcount conducted during typical years, the 2021 PIT report is even more imperfect, and will stand out as an anomaly compared to past and future counts.

This year’s data showed a slight uptick in Pinellas County’s overall homelessness rate, but reaffirmed a multiyear downtrend. Although Finlaw-Dusseault says they won’t know exactly how homelessness trended during Covid-19 until the county resumes the traditional PIT count methods.

According to the Leadership Alliance, the HUD will not compare this year’s numbers to other years or use them to determine funding, because of the special circumstances Covid-19 presented.

“They (The HUD) recognize the data’s gonna be totally wonky,” Finlaw-Dusseault said.

The Leadership Alliance is planning to conduct a full PIT count in 2022, as long as pandemic restrictions do not interfere.