The Point-in-Time (PIT) Count is a “snapshot” of how many people are experiencing homelessness within a specific area on one night of the year. For the Maine Continuum of Care, that area covers the entire state of Maine, and January 25, 2022 was chosen as the night of the count. A Housing Inventory Count (HIC) is conducted on that same night to determine how many beds and units are in use or available to provide shelter or other types of housing for people experiencing homelessness.
Emergency Shelters, Transitional Housing Projects, and other related programs submitted data on how many people they were serving on that night. Outreach workers and volunteers sought out people who were unsheltered on the night of the count – sleeping in tents, cars, or other locations not suitable for regular human habitation. Volunteers also spoke to people at a number of Service Based locations in the following days to determine where they stayed on the night of the count. Nearly 70 different agencies and more than 80 volunteers contributed data to this year’s count.
That data was entered into the HUD Data Exchange (HDX) System, which generated the reports attached below, breaking the data out into Households with at least one Adult and at least one Child, Households without Children (which may include one or more Adults), and Households with only Children (which could include one or more people under age 18). The Veteran and Youth data are subsets of the information in the other reports.
The 2022 Point-in-Time Count includes data on individuals and families who were experiencing homelessness, and were placed in hotel/motel units using COVID-19 related Emergency Rental Assistance (ERA) and General Assistance (GA) funds. Including this data dramatically increased the number of people reported in Emergency Shelter situations compared to previous years’ counts. The Maine Continuum of Care will continue to examine this and other data to better understand the scope and scale of homelessness in Maine, and work to develop strategies and solutions to address the current need for housing and services, and the root causes of homelessness.