Houston, Texas (January 23, 2024) – This week, the nonprofit Coalition for the Homeless of Houston/Harris County (CFTH) is leading the annual Point-in-Time Homeless Count & Survey (“PIT Count”) to identify the number of people experiencing homelessness in Houston and throughout Harris, Fort Bend, and Montgomery counties.

According to a report released in December from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), the number of people experiencing homelessness nationwide increased by 12% from 2022 to 2023. In Houston, the number stayed roughly the same.

“The fact that homelessness in Houston has, to this point, not increased in the wake of the pandemic is remarkable. By investing their federal COVID relief dollars into housing-focused solutions, the City of Houston and Harris County helped us buck national trends,” said Kelly Young, President & CEO of CFTH. “However, even while to many of us it may feel like the pandemic is over, its effects on our unstably housed and low-income neighbors will continue to be felt in the years to come. The 2024 PIT Count will help us to continue to understand its impacts.”

CFTH coordinates the Houston region’s coordinated, nationally recognized, public-private homeless response system known as The Way Home. Thanks to their collaboration, the partners of The Way Home have housed more than 30,000 people since 2012.

CFTH will release the results of Houston’s 2024 PIT Count in the spring following independent verification by an epidemiologist. These results will shed light on how inflation, housing costs, and the after-effects of the COVID pandemic have affected homelessness in our region.

More information about the 2024 Point-in-Time Homeless Count & Survey

The PIT Count offers a snapshot of how many people are experiencing homelessness in our region on a single night. This year, the “night of record” is Monday, Jan. 22. CFTH determines the number of people staying in shelters on that night by pulling records electronically from the Homeless Management Information System (HMIS). The unsheltered count is conducted on the following days from Wednesday, Jan. 24 to Friday, Jan. 26. (Survey activities originally planned for Tuesday, Jan. 23 were postponed due to weather.) More than 400 volunteers and staff of local nonprofit service provider partners will canvass the three-county region to survey people living unsheltered, using an app on their mobile devices.

Results from the 2024 PIT Count will help gauge the progress of The Way Home’s ongoing collaborative efforts. It will also help CFTH and partner homeless outreach teams target their outreach throughout the year. The PIT Count illuminates specific demographic and programmatic gaps and provides additional information needed to end chronic homelessness and continue to improve the local homeless response system.

The PIT Count is a requirement of the U.S. Department of Housing & Urban Development (HUD) for the annual Continuum of Care (CoC) funding process. HUD furnishes the majority of funding for programs that provide housing and supportive services to people experiencing homelessness in the region. In 2023, HUD granted more than $46 million to the Houston area.

For more information and for results of previous years’ counts, please click here.