The PIT Count’s Pitfalls: Rethinking Homelessness Data

HUD PIT Count - Homeless data

photo credit: © Cherie Diez


Adam Ruege of Community Solutions highlights the urgent need for real-time, accurate data on homelessness, arguing that outdated and flawed methods like the Point-In-Time count hinder meaningful progress in addressing the crisis.


Adam Ruege Explains How Better Metrics Can Drive Real Solutions

America’s homeless problem can be summarized in a solitary word – shortage. Not only are we facing an unprecedented shortage of affordable housing units combined with a shortage of supportive services, but even our current data-gathering methods, the most used of which is the Point-In-Time count, commonly referred to as PIT, are falling drastically short of what needs to be the standard.

As renowned strategist Adam Ruege aptly notes, we start each January with a snapshot of homelessness from the previous year. This means we’re already a year behind. How do we get out of this rut, and perhaps more importantly, do we even want to?

Inaccurate and Outdated Data: The Truth About Homelessness is that Nobody Knows

Have you ever walked down a bustling city street and wondered how the homeless crisis got so out of hand? Did you ever begin a mental checklist of the number of people you witnessed sleeping outside or the number of friends and family members unable to make rent? Have you noticed the uptick in vehicular homelessness, the parking lots aglow with crowded cars? Perhaps you are a teacher seeing a surge in student absences, or a social worker who knows street homelessness is spiking.

We know what we see, but the numbers before us don’t match up. This is because the PIT count we are using is inherently flawed, an undercount at best. As we turn the corner into 2025, we will again glimpse the increase in homelessness, but the snapshot will not give us the entire picture.

Homelessness as a Point in Time, rather than an Annual Equation

Ordinarily, we receive information as an annual or monthly statistic – teens are involved in this many accidents per year, this worker makes x amount of dollars each month, etc. However, when it comes to counting homeless people, we do not use the usual data-gathering methods, nor do we deliver the data in a clearly computed fashion. Rather, we are given something called a snapshot of homelessness, which is an attempt to calculate the number of people who are visibly homeless over the three coldest nights of the year.

We recently sat down with Adam Ruege, the Director of Strategy and Evaluation at Community Solutions, to dig into the data, see how we can improve it, and learn why accuracy is so important.

“I’ve been [at Community Solutions] for a little over three and a half years now, and I work on our data,” Ruege said. “We have data coaching teams. We do internal data analytics. I also run our evaluation shop.”

“I previously worked for the US Department of Veterans Affairs in the National Homeless Program Office for about 8 years before I came to Community Solutions,” Ruege continued. “In both roles, a huge part of my job centered on understanding data. Understanding what data is available, including the point in time count, to help infor strategy.”

Shooting Snapshots When We Need A Whole Reel

“Given my experience in the field, I think the biggest challenge with the PIT count is the fact that it’s a snapshot. This limits its ability to reduce or end homelessness. It doesn’t paint a clear enough picture,” Ruege explained.

It’s not a HUD requirement or a federal government requirement for communities to be reporting on and collecting data about how many people are experiencing homelessness on a real-time basis,” Ruege said, adding, “That’s what we do at Community Solutions. We have a binding data approach to be able to understand how many people are experiencing homelessness at any given time, the reasons why they’re coming into homelessness, and the reasons why they’re leaving.”

“But this is still optional according to our government, which is part of the reason the data is so limited. We know the point-in-time count is a requirement, and it has some uses, but it’s still only a snapshot. Having more real-time data and understanding the trends on a more real-time basis is more like a video, which is what we need if we want to solve the homeless crisis.”

Bad Timing: A PIT Count Pitfall

“We know communities in our Built for Zero Program, which is the initiative that Community Solutions runs, have a better insight and more of a real-time grasp about who’s experiencing homelessness,” Ruege continued. “And some of that is timing. With the PIT count itself, we know that one of the major limitations is the fact that it’s held during the last 2 weeks of January. So, there are massive undercounts in communities where it’s colder.”

“We also know that trying to count people in the middle of the night doesn’t yield the most accurate results. The other point I’d like to make is, as of December 20th, we still don’t have the results of the 2024 PIT count. That means that nationally, we’ll be reacting to data that’s a year old, and communities have moved past that.”

Longitudinal Trends and Other Positives of the Point-In-Time Data

Experts concur that while the PIT count is a far from perfect resource, it still has some upsides in the effort to quantify homelessness.

“The PIT count can be useful in that it shows full year-over-year trends, longitudinal trends that go back to 2007,” Ruege said. “That can be a great tool for understanding that homelessness is trending upward, but it doesn’t mean that communities can use that data to end homelessness, which is an important distinction.”

Looking Ahead: Here’s How We Might Achieve Better Data and Why That Matters to the Cause

It’s impossible to end homelessness without having accurate numbers on the following information:

  • How many people are annually enduring homelessness?
  • What is causing people to become homeless?
  • What is causing people to exit homelessness?

If the above-listed information was delivered with laser-like accuracy, we could work on preventing the things that are causing homelessness and promoting the things that cause people to exit homelessness into permanent, supportive housing. Here, we find that Adam Ruege and his associates have spearheaded solutions and uncovered innovative ways to collect data, and the impact speaks volumes for their work.

“One of our big efforts is to help communities redesign their data systems and outreach systems so that they can pinpoint how many people are experiencing homelessness,” he said. “We’ve been doing this for 10 years. Over 140 communities are working with us across the US. So, we know that communities can figure out who’s experiencing homelessness at any given time. It’s entirely possible and not even a matter of crafting a completely new approach. Rather, it is possible by tweaking and reconfiguring the old systems, updating them, if you will.”

“For example, communities like Denver, Colorado, have been in the news a lot recently. They did real-time tracking of how many uncharted veterans were living on the street, and they have, just this week, announced that they’ve ended uncharted veteran homelessness, which is an incredible testament. And you can only do that type of work if you actually have real-time data to understand the scope of the problem.”

We Know Homelessness is Increasing. Tell Your Legislators to Implement Better Data Gathering Techniques.

We already have a snapshot of homelessness. Many of us catch a glimpse of this crisis as we move through our day-to-day activities. Some of us even experience it personally or vicariously through a family member or friend. The only way to do better is to know better, and the only way to know better is to make use of more up-to-the-minute data-gathering techniques.

Tell your local legislators to make an accurate annual count of homelessness a requirement today, so when 2026 rolls around, we’re not relying on data from 2025 and are opening up the calendar, which is already a year behind.


Cynthia Griffith

Cynthia Griffith

     

Cynthia Griffith is a freelance writer dedicated to social justice and environmental issues.

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