‘It’s going to get worse.’ Centre County’s homeless count increases by nearly 100 in a year
Centre County’s homeless population, based on a recent Point-in-Time count, has significantly increased in a year’s time.
The county’s Office of Adult Services and housing nonprofits in February took part in the Point-in-Time count, an annual count of people experiencing homelessness who are in emergency shelter, transitional housing and safe havens on a single night. A count is taken of the sheltered or unsheltered (living or residing somewhere that is not habitable for humans, such as a car, in an RV without utility hook ups or on the street) homeless.
This year, 279 unsheltered and sheltered homeless individuals were counted. That includes 132 people in emergency shelter, 32 in transitional housing, 97 in rapid rehousing and 17 in permanent supportive housing. This year, the count occurred across Centre County on Feb. 24, with volunteers asking where people slept the night before.
To visualize that number, divide it by 25, the number of kids often in a classroom, Faith Ryan, director of Centre County’s Office of Adult Services, said.
“That’s 11 classrooms of kids. Sometimes we have to like break it down like that for people because it’s like, well, what’s 278? What’s 279? Well, that’s 11 classrooms of (people) who are homeless,” Ryan said. “And think about all the lives that touches. All their family members or siblings or grandparents or aunts or uncles. Homelessness impacts everybody.”
The total is up from 181 individuals in shelters in 2021 (the unsheltered PIT count was canceled last year due to COVID-19).
In the county’s PIT count this year, there was one unsheltered homeless individual. That is typical, Ryan said.
“We typically do not find a very large number of individuals. We usually average anywhere from one to four, one to five every year. Sometimes if we find four or five, it’s because we found a household,” Ryan said. “That obviously doesn’t mean they’re not out there.”
Six teams of staff from Adult Services hit more than 150 locations throughout the county in the unsheltered PIT count, providing information at each location about resources, Ryan said. They do a lot of prep work before the count takes place, including training for the teams so they know what to look for, and outreach in communities.
Why the increase in sheltered homeless?
Morgan Wasikonis, executive director at Housing Transitions, said eviction moratoriums were just starting to be lifted around the time of last year’s PIT count. Now, more people have been evicted or are struggling to maintain their housing, leading to an increase in the sheltered homeless.
Wasikonis said they’ve been expecting a higher number of sheltered homeless since the pandemic began. As eviction moratoriums were extended, some landlords chose not to give the option of lease renewal. A big cause of homelessness, she said, is relationship changes (a death of a family member someone has been living with, for example) or people outstaying their welcome.
“We’ve been bracing for it. So when you ask, ‘are you alarmed?’ I think we’re probably not really alarmed. But at the same time, I think we all wished it wasn’t going to happen like this. I think we probably aren’t through the worst of it again. At all. ... We know it’s going to get worse before it gets better.”
Housing Transitions focuses on assisting individuals and families, and helping them find permanent housing solutions. Wasikonis said if someone has experienced chronic homelessness and has a documented disability they might be living in permanent supportive housing. Those individuals don’t count in the sheltered PIT count, as they have an apartment and are in a program.
But, included in the PIT count report is “rapid rehousing,” which are people who have been homeless or fleeing domestic violence, and entered into a program where they are able to secure their own lease, but have their security deposit, first month’s rent and a period of rental assistance.
“Those are folks ... who very much would likely be unsheltered, mostly because our shelters would be full if all of them did not have housing, so we always kind of take that into consideration when we’re looking at our Point-in-Time count,” Wasikonis said.
What’s next?
For more than a year, Ryan and the Adult Services have been working with the Emergency Rental Assistance Program and they’re still getting the same number of applications as they did when it first began. They’ve served well over 1,000 unique households and have received applications from over 2,000 unique households.
As of Feb. 28, the county has a balance of $4.1 million of ERAP 1 and $9.3 million of ERAP 2. The program end date for ERAP 1 is August 2022 and ERAP 2 is December 2025. Based on current monthly spending, Ryan expects that all ERAP funds will be depleted by early- to mid-2023.
Through ERAP, 95 individuals (69 households) were housed in a hotel during the PIT count. For each household, the average cost per month is approximately $2,000.
“Really what we’ve done is, we’ve shone a light. So yes, it’s very scary and daunting to think that our numbers went up 100 overnight. They did and they didn’t. Because really what we were finding with the hotel portion is that ... we opened up the floodgates, because it’s such a low barrier program that we wanted to be able to see who really is in need and what do we have the capacity to do,” Ryan said.
Since the PIT count, there has been more structure added to the hotel policy, including capping the number of households it serves to 50.
They’re looking at how the department can better provide case management services to those who want it. The assistance would be to not only provide them guidance in finding housing, but also connect them to services that Housing Transitions provides and help them through whatever transition they’re healing with. Resource navigation is very helpful to people when they’re in a crisis, Ryan said.
A lot of the people who are in the hotels have “incredible barriers,” Ryan said, so part of it would also be connecting those individuals to services such as mental health, drug and alcohol, and domestic violence services.
Because hotel sheltering was only meant to be temporary, the goal is eventually to close down the program.
“We don’t want to close it down and sweep the problem right under the rug again. We want to do our very best to build some other type of infrastructure, some sort of programming or case management or something in place of, because eventually we’re not going to have the funding through ERAP and we certainly won’t have the capacity to keep going at this rate,” Ryan said.
For more information on ERAP or adult services through Centre County, visit centrecountypa.gov/308/Adult-Services or call 814-355-6768. For more information on Housing Transitions, visit housingtransitions.org or call 814-237-5508.
