Every year, volunteers across the state gather before dawn and drive down every street of their communities, counting the number of people experiencing homelessness.
The point-in-time count is required by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development as part of annual data-gathering the federal government uses to determine how much funding each locality will receive to support services for unhoused populations.
Nevada’s 15 rural counties also saw their largest numbers in the past decade, with slightly more than 400 people experiencing homelessness on the day the count took place.
For Humboldt County, 13 people total were reported in the point-in-time count to be homeless. Of those, nine people are considered unsheltered homeless (individuals “with a primary nighttime residence that is a public or private place not designed for or ordinarily used as a regular sleeping accommodation for human beings”) and four are sheltered homeless (individuals residing in Emergency Shelter, Transitional Housing, and Safe Haven programs on the night of the count).
Alaine Nye is the Frontier Community action Agency Program Director/Co-Director and responsible for collecting point-in-time count data for Humboldt, Lander and Pershing counties. She said that the numbers for the three counties actually should have been higher than those recorded, but understaffing, lack of comfortability among staff and the strict guidelines for collecting the numbers kept staff from reaching certain people that would also fall within the criteria for the count.
Nye said that there are many people experiencing unsheltered homelessness on properties with no utilities in very remote rural areas that staff were not able to contact or did not feel comfortable making contact with solo.
Further West, in Washoe County the point-in-time count revealed there were nearly 1,700 people experiencing homelessness in Northern Nevada. Last year, a little more than 1,600 people were counted.
Clark County reported more than 6,500 people experiencing homelessness within the county, the highest amount since 2015 when the count reported the unhoused population reached more than 7,000.
Overall numbers of unhoused people across the state have increased, but service providers, researchers, scholars and government officials say the point-in-time count doesn’t account for the complexities of homelessness and is a single annual snapshot within a community that changes every day.
However, the increases arrive as the state’s population is rising as a whole, meaning though there are more unhoused people in Nevada it could be a byproduct of people in general moving into the state.
In recent years, officials have observed an increase in families, people with disabilities and seniors seeking services.
Frederick Steinmann, director of the University Center for Economic Development at UNR, said there are multiple reasons for the steep increase in the unhoused population of rural Nevada including mines developing without communities having sufficient housing for the incoming workforce.
“This is kind of when you become the victim of your own success,” Steinmann said. “A lot of people flock in and you can’t build the housing fast enough.”
More beds lead to fewer unsheltered people
Though the number of people experiencing homelessness increased in Washoe County, the number of people living unsheltered — defined by HUD as living in an area not made for human habitation including abandoned buildings and on sidewalks — decreased by 21 percent.
Marie Baxter, the CEO of Catholic Charities of Northern Nevada, said the decrease in unsheltered populations is because the Cares Campus — the largest shelter in the area and managed by Washoe County — has significantly increased the amount of beds available.
“The shelter … on Record Street held a couple 100 people,” Baxter said. “The Cares Campus can hold upwards of 600 to 700 people. There’s also just a lot more commitment across the community to try to find solutions for people experiencing homelessness.”
Catrina Peters, the homeless services coordinator with the Washoe County Housing and Homeless Services team, added that the Cares Campus has added several emergency beds compared to previous years and some beds could have been excluded from the count before.
Local jurisdictions have also been adopting stricter policies when it comes to people living outdoors. Most recently, Sparks City Council adopted ordinances to the city municipal code that prohibits people from living in vehicles parked on public roadways, blocking public sidewalks, right of ways and streets as well as starting fires on public property without a permit.
The City of Sparks also expanded “the exclusion of camping in the Truckee River Corridor to 1000 feet off the river.” Previously the exclusion was set at 350 feet off the shore of the Truckee River. The city council also unanimously voted to reduce “the definition of an oversized vehicle from 24 feet to 15 feet,” read a statement from the Sparks city attorney’s office released Aug. 15.
Other Northern Nevada jurisdictions have adopted stricter regulations about living on public lands in recent years.
Though there has been a decrease in unsheltered people, Peters said there will not be a decrease in homelessness until there is an increase in affordable housing units.
“I think it really underscores the continued need for affordable housing,” Peters said. “This is not a problem we’re going to be able to solve without some substantial efforts to increase the number of affordable housing units for extremely low income populations in our community.”
Understanding increasing rates of homelessness
COVID-19 eviction protections outlined in AB486, a bill passed during the 2021 legislative session, expired in June. As a result, tenants with pending or active rental assistance applications for at least 60 days found themselves without the bill’s safety net and were faced with physical removal from their homes.
Steinmann attributes a couple of reasons to the increase in homelessness overall in Northern Nevada. Though the end of the pandemic marked the end of rental assistance and eviction protections for some, it also marked the end of a shelter in place order with abusive partners or family members for others.
“There are more people dealing with abusive situations than we thought,” Steinmann said. “Now all of a sudden, you’ve lifted a shelter in place order and the first thing that that person who is experiencing abuse may do is get out of that situation [but] there’s nowhere for them to go.”
Steinmann said particularly now, as the dust continues to settle post-pandemic, there is no simple cause for the increased rates of homelessness in Northern Nevada.
“Very difficult to point to one or two things,” he said. “And part of it is just the ongoing disruption from the pandemic as we try to let the dust settle and figure out what the landscape actually looks like.”
Taking the data with a grain of salt
Though economic scholars said the point-in-time count is valuable to observe year over year trends, experts advise to take the point-in-time count with a grain of salt.
“Yeah, point-in-time is interesting, you know, but it’s just that one snapshot,” said Mike Kazmierski, the former head of the Economic Development Authority of Western Nevada (EDAWN).
On top of it being one data point for an entire year, scholars, experts and service providers agree that the point-in-time count undercounts the actual number of people experiencing homelessness in a given community. They point to not everyone being willing to give out information about their situation during the count, methodology changes and time differences contributing to the inaccuracies in the point-in-time count.
Kazmierski said the Built for Zero’s — a nationwide initiative to end homelessness that utilizes name-based data — counting system is more accurate than point-in-time, which notoriously undercounts people experiencing homelessness. He noted that Built for Zero displays the rates of homelessness Washoe County experiences day-to-day.
Washoe County’s July 2023 Built for Zero data indicates there were almost 1,900 people experiencing homelessness within the area. In January 2023, when the point-in-time count was conducted, the Built for Zero reflected a little more than 2,400 people experiencing homelessness in Washoe County, 700 more people than what the point in time count showed.
Though the data has its issues, Steinmann said the homeless census is a good way to inform overall policy decisions because it reflects the year over year changes of the unhoused population within a given community.
“As the population changes, we want to make sure that policies and services reflect the actual needs of the population,” Steinmann said. “The major downside of a point-in-time count is the very nature of a point-in-time count. The same problem we run into with the United States Census Bureau … This is a country of over 300 approximately 350 million people. The population is very dynamic. It’s not static.”
Steinmann said not every person can be counted as some people are not willing to give information to volunteers surveying on the night of the point-in-time count. Though the point-in-time count is usually required to happen within the first 10 days of January, it is sometimes rescheduled if there is inclement weather or a COVID-19 outbreak.
Thomas said there are also changes in methodologies each year. Thomas said some years volunteers count a tent as 1.2 people, other years it is three people.
“Some years we’re comparing apples to oranges,” Thomas said. “Some years we’re comparing apples to wheat bread. I’m regularly concerned that we can’t tell a complete and accurate story about homelessness in Southern Nevada.”
Service providers and scholars agreed another problem with the point-in-time count is data sets don’t reflect the complexity of being unhoused.
“The complexities are not highlighted in the numbers. The solutions are not highlighted in the numbers,” Thomas said. “So overall, the numbers tell us that homelessness has increased. It doesn’t tell us what we have an opportunity to do about that.”