Maurice Smith <risingrivermedia@gmail.com> sends in: The rough numbers for the 2024 Point In Time (PIT) Count were announced this week, and sometimes good news is just good news (the City's PDF Summary is attached, and Emry Dinman at the Spokesman has done a very good summary article, too). So, based on the preliminary numbers released this week by the City of Spokane for the 2024 PIT count, here's the good news: overall homelessness in greater Spokane is down by 15%, from 2,390 in 2023 to 2,021 in 2024. Most of that decrease was driven by a dramatic drop in the number of people experiencing unsheltered homelessness, down from 955 in 2023 to 443 in 2024, a decrease of 54%. I believe Mayor Brown was correct when she offered that much of the decrease, especially in the unsheltered count, resulted from closing Camp Hope. I would agree. By the time Camp Hope closed (one year ago), around 250 Camp residents had moved from the Camp to a variety of housing options (I would insert this caveat, offered by an experienced outreach worker. We don't know how many individuals have died while homeless between PIT counts, especially when it comes to drug overdose deaths. A sobering thought). Since the closure, an additional 300 unsheltered individuals have been contacted by outreach workers, entered into CMIS, and connected with services, including housing. These ongoing efforts to address unsheltered homelessness appear to be working. At the same time, it appears that the number of those staying in local shelters has risen from 1,435 in 2023 to 1,578 in 2024. I find that curiously interesting since - according to published and publicly available numbers - we don't have that many emergency shelter beds. And that brings me to the not-so-good-news: some of the City's numbers simply don't add up as presented . . . again (For an in-depth critique of the annual PIT Count nationwide, see the attached PDF "HUD-PIT-Report2017")
Thank you Maurice for the update.