On a late January evening, despite heavy rains and fierce winds, at least 759 people in Durham had no place to call home.
The figure was announced last week as a result of the Point-In-Time Count, an annual one-night tally of the homeless.
On Jan. 30, 2013, Durham County officials collaborated with 13 local shelters and organizations and about 50 community volunteers to count the unsheltered population—those in cars, on the streets or in the woods—as well as those staying in transitional housing and emergency shelters.
Of the 759 homeless counted that evening, 118 were children. Fifty-three were unsheltered—7 percent of the overall count, lower than the national average of 38 percent. Nearly 300 have chronic substance abuse issues, 126 struggle with severe mental illness and 100 were victims of domestic violence, according to the report by Durham's Community Development Department.
It was challenging to locate people who weren't staying in shelters because of the thunderstorm that night. “It's a difficult undertaking since you don't know where they'll be staying,” Minnie Forte-Brown, vice chairwoman of the Durham Board of Education and member of Durham's Homeless Services Advisory Committee, said at the press conference. “They did the absolute best they could, but it doesn't mean we got everybody.”
Bo Glenn, chairman of the Homeless Services Advisory Committee, suspects that many of Durham's poor are still unaccounted for. “It doesn't count those sleeping on someone's couch, those staying with family or friends, in an unheated garage, or in the woods so deep we can't find them. It doesn't count the people who are in jail, or those who have to decide between rent, heat, medicine, food.”
Though most of this year's numbers rose slightly from last year's total of 698 homeless, the number of “chronically homeless” dropped from 134 to 87. The number of veterans also fell from 116 to 93.
The U.S. Dept. of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) requires communities to participate in the count in order to receive federal stimulus dollars. Durham has participated since 1999, dispatching volunteers one night per year to canvass the streets. They report the numbers to HUD, which analyzes the results and provides feedback on which programs are working and which need adjustment.
“For most people it takes just a little bit of help. A little bit can stop the downward spiral,” said Glenn.
