On Jan. 21, the Rhode Island Coalition to End Homelessness ran its annual Point-In-Time count, which reports how many individuals are facing homelessness in the state on a single night in late January.
The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development requires that every Continuum of Care Program — regional planning bodies that aim to alleviate homelessness in their state — conduct a PIT count every odd-numbered year. A CoC has performed a PIT count in Rhode Island every year since 2005.
The 2025 count is set to be released around June, according to Jennifer Barrera, the Coalition’s chief strategy officer.
On the night of the count, coalition volunteers traveled across the state to count the number of individuals they see on the street experiencing homelessness, Barrera said. The Coalition maintains a database that records the number of individuals occupying shelter beds on any given night, which it also incorporates into the count.
This past week, volunteers and staff from the coalition visited shelters and other service sites to ensure homeless individuals who may have been missed were also incorporated into the count.
But estimating the number of unsheltered homeless individuals can be challenging at times, Barrera said.
This year, the cold weather “limited the amount of walking that some of the volunteers could do,” she said. Barrera added that when the weather gets cold, “people tend to double up, triple up into hotel rooms or unique places to stay” which can create difficulties for the organization when attempting to count each individual experiencing homelessness in the state.
Barrera added that some people experiencing homelessness do not always want to interact with volunteers from the coalition.
Eric Hirsch, a professor in the sociology department at Providence College and the director of the Rhode Island Homeless Advocacy Project, believes the PIT count provides necessary information about homelessness in Rhode Island, but emphasized that the data provided by PIT is likely “an undercount.”
Citing previously planned police raids of homeless encampments, Hirsch said a lot of people experiencing homelessness may be “hiding” in fear that “they would lose their tents and all their possessions.”
Since the COVID-19 pandemic, there has been an increasing trend in the number of people experiencing homelessness in Rhode Island. The 2024 PIT census showed that there were 2,442 individuals experiencing homelessness on the night of the count. This is over double the amount of the number of homeless individuals in 2020, according to the PIT count results from that year.
Legislators and advocates recently demanded that Gov. Dan McKee declare a state of emergency on Rhode Island’s homelessness crisis, The Herald previously reported. This ongoing concern calls for a change in the government’s allocation of resources in regards to housing.
Data from the PIT count helps the state determine funding metrics for housing programs as well as national initiatives, Barrera added. She said that local governments can also use the count by incorporating the results into their planning initiatives and funding decisions.
The Rhode Island Department of Housing focuses on “a holistic approach, emphasizing shared responsibility across the community,” Emily Marshall, a spokesperson for the department, wrote in an email to The Herald. The department stresses “the importance of collective responsibility in tackling homelessness” while “laying the groundwork for long-term solutions.”
“We all have to keep working to address homelessness on whatever level,” Barrera added.