Montgomery County started its annual count of its unhoused population early Wednesday morning.
It's part of the national Point In Time count conducted within the last 10 days of January. It aims to create a national snapshot of homelessness.
Teams of volunteers and outreach workers traveled in teams of three or four around the county. They dispersed from the St. Vincent Shelter on Apple Street at 3:30 AM.
"We'll be looking at places where the professional outreach teams know that persons experiencing unsheltered homelessness will likely be sleeping or have encampments or have known to be maybe sleeping in cars overnight," said Amy Stewart, who leads Montgomery County’s Continuum of Care for the homeless.
"Some we don't want to disturb at all because we're respecting the fact that they're sleeping and that's their home for the night," Stewart said. "Others are very chatty and want to tell us their stories and maybe ask for help and how can we get them connected to the right types of services."
They continue the count throughout the day Wednesday, surveying community members utilizing meal sites.
"We're hoping that we'll have as good a count as we can of all of the people experiencing homelessness, both unsheltered and sheltered," Stewart said.
Last year, they found over 680 people experiencing homelessness in the county, down from around 770 in 2023. That was still the second highest count since 2007.
The count is commissioned by the U.S. department of Housing and Urban Development. It collects basic demographic information and records information like the number of children, families and veterans. The department releases those results in late spring.
"We'll have to clean not only the unsheltered surveys and observation forms of people that we find outside, but we'll also be combining that with the data for the folks who are in shelter as well," Stewart said. "That information then impacts appropriations for federal funding to, like HUD and Health and Human Services, potentially the Department of Education and a number of others."