LAKE COUNTY— Despite extreme weather and the present threat of COVID, organizers of the annual Point-in-Time (PIT) Count in Lake County said more surveys were completed this year than last year and for the first time ever, Lake County utilized digital surveys exclusively, leading to an easier way to share data immediately.
The Point-in-Time (PIT) Count is a count of sheltered and unsheltered people experiencing homelessness that the Department of Housing and Urban Development requires each Continuum of Care (CoC) nationwide to conduct in the last 10 days of January each year.
According to Rev. Shannon Kimbell-Auth, the chairperson for this year’s PIT Count for Lake County, though the official count won’t be completed for several weeks, 499 surveys had been completed by Thursday evening. Kimbell-Auth added that she was sure the numbers would increase. Part of the reason is the organizers want to make sure that they don’t duplicate any counts. Preliminary data showed 386 unsheltered and 200 homeless sheltered.
Last year’s count of 332 people surveyed also determined the impact of fires on people’s status with 117 people responding to a question about their homelessness being caused by fires, 38 of which mentioned the Mendocino Complex Fire as a cause and 33 identified the Valley Fire from 2015.
Kimbell-Auth explained the difference between the sheltered and unsheltered part of the count saying people who are “couch surfing” are not designated as homeless for the purpose of the PIT Count. The reverend said some homeless counts allow the use of people who are couch surfing or living in a garage, but this count is looking for how many are living on the street versus how many are in a shelter.
“This is going to be our most challenging PIT Count ever,” she said prior to Thursday’s count. “The barriers that we are facing this year are extreme. We have an entire population of people experiencing homelessness in the middle of the worst winter storm we have seen in many years. Everybody is hunkered down. It’s difficult to get out and around. We have people that can’t get to work,” she said, adding that In the state of California, only 20% of the Continuum of Care (COC) were actually attempting to do a full count this year. “We are in that 20%.”
Kimbell-Auth said the weather this year was an obstacle for three reasons. “The first is that we had originally planned to utilize all outdoor locations to aid with spatial distancing and COVID protocols. This is not as easy to do in extreme weather. The second is that the extreme storm system is life threatening to someone living on the street and off the grid. It has forced more of the population experiencing homelessness to find emergency shelter that prevents us from finding them as easily as an encampment might. Finally, while we invite people to come to the PIT survey sites to be counted we also rely on volunteers walking around and reaching out to those who won’t come to us.” The pastor said she thought fewer volunteers woud be willing to stay out the longer hours searching in the pouring rain or snow.
The impacts on the community
“What the PIT count does is: It gives a really good picture of the homelessness situation – age group, where people live etc. The number of people who do choose to live in the encampments is fairly large. The perception of being a homeless is changing, because people are losing their jobs, so they’re losing their homes, and they’re struggling, because rent and everything is so high. And it’s hard to find a place,” said Annie Barnes, executive director at Sunrise Special services Foundation responsible for this year’s site in Lucerne.
There were numerous participating sites involved in this year’s count including Clearlake (La Voz and the Senior Center and the Veterans’ Outreach Clinic), Lower Lake and Middletown (United Methodist Church), Kelseyville (Senior Center), Lakeport (The Harbor on Main), Upper Lake (Community Center), Lucerne (Snake Lady’s Restaurant) and Clearlake Oaks (Big Oak Peer Center.)
“If somebody is down and out, and it’s an adult child or relative, you do your best to maybe let them couch surf in your place. They live that way because maybe they’re not able to get their lives together, be at mental health, be at posttraumatic stress, whatever it is,” added Barnes. “Three people went work on what we call ‘roaming’. They took the car and went out to the parks, to the hills, to the beaches, and where we know that the homeless ones can camp, where they sleep. When people heard that we were having meals and we were interviewing them, they came out. They got bags with things that they could certainly use out there, got hot meals, but then we also brought hot meals to those we knew that could not get to the site. We do have people living out there that are in their 60s, with their health (being) not very good. It’s sad. There was a lot less participants than usual though, because it was raining.”
—Ariel Carmona contributed to this report
