The temperature hit a low of 19 degrees F. the night of Jan. 23, which was better than the -4 the night before, but still very cold.

It wasn't an easy night to be a volunteer getting a headcount of unhoused people in Kalamazoo. But imagine living outside in that cold.

If a community wants funding to help the homeless population, the Department of Housing and Urban Development requires that they provide a "Point in Time" count of people who are unhoused. 

So, Kalamazoo County's Continuum of Care counts, and then analyzes the data, and sends it to HUD.

The PIT count is meant to be a snapshot of the number of people living outside or who are homeless but have found temporary shelter. It must occur in the last ten days of January. 

The data gives HUD an idea of needs nationwide and within states and counties. The final PIT assessment should end up with the U.S. Congress, and then be used to allocate funds for national and local programs to reduce the amount of people living without housing.

ShutterstockBut things are different this year with the new Trump administration. Reports of HUD field offices downsized to "skeleton crews," and of the withholding of at least $60 million in promised affordable housing funding, seem to show that funding for housing and HUD itself might not be a priority for the new administration.

If, this year, the data falls on deaf ears federally, locally the numbers can still be useful. 

"It's an incredibly important number when it comes to funding, but it really is so hard to predict how it will be used (on a federal level)," Carrie Bosch, HMIS Systems Administrator, Kalamazoo County COC, says.

"It's really difficult in even a normal year to predict how the point-in-time count will affect funding in our community, and it's especially difficult this year with all of the uncertainties in the federal government," she says.

Courtesy of Carrie BoschCarrie Bosch, HMIS Systems Administrator, Kalamazoo County COCBut having a clear picture of housing needs is still important locally.

"So we really just focus on having as accurate a number as possible, and looking at how we can use that number locally rather than, you know, trying to get caught up in what it may or may not mean for (federal) funding."

Finding people on a cold night

From early evening to midnight Jan. 23, PIT count volunteers went to find people who may not want to be found. 

Tammie Natho, Housing Supervisor for Integrated Services of Kalamazoo (ISK), and the Kalamazoo COC's volunteer coordinator for the PIT count, says a key to finding Kalamazoo's homeless is to know them.

At ISK, for over three years, Natho has worked in street outreach. "So working in that capacity, it kind of gave me the knowledge to help with coordinating something like PIT counts. Knowing the population, knowing the ins and outs of the camps, just kind of helping advise on how to handle things," she says. "How to be sensitive to the population, the networking and the resources that can be involved, all of that."

"It was definitely a cold night," she says of Jan. 23. "We did end up seeing a lot more people than I think we expected to this year."

The team went to all known camps. "There are camps all over the county," she says, that are very well-hidden. They handed out resource information and took surveys. 

"Leading up to the count, myself and our street outreach team try to get the best idea of where these camps are. I mean, it's kind of our day-to-day job, but we do it even more leading up to the count," she says.

"We'll go out at different hours, really just trying to see who's out there, where they're staying, and connect with them ahead of time. We also let them know that we will be out so that they're not just taken off guard when we do show up in the middle of the night past our normal working hours."

ShutterstockCamps can be found "way off the beaten path.... Yeah, it's definitely an experience, especially doing it at the hours that we do, but it's a worthwhile experience for sure."

For Natho, this is her job, she says. Most nights it ends at 5 p.m. But she always thinks, "this is their life. This is their world. They're not returning home. Well, they are, but it's to their tent or to their car or wherever they might be staying."

Courtesy of Tammie NathoTammie Natho, Housing Supervisor for Integrated Services of Kalamazoo For the PIT count, Natho has a chance to show volunteers who don't see this world every day what these lives are like. 

"It puts stories and names to the faces that they're seeing every day, out on the street, panhandling or collecting cans. All these people that the community talks about so often," she says. "It gives them an opportunity to actually interact with them and to learn who they are, why they're here, what's preventing them from housing, and actually put stories and context to their situations."

'See the need in real-time' 

Volunteers who help count are often in organizations that work on housing, from grassroots advocacy groups and nonprofits to local government.

Therefore the PIT count is an "exciting opportunity for people who are trying to address the issue and trying to navigate the field and system of housing and homelessness, giving them this opportunity so that they can see the need in real time," Natho says.

"Going out and counting is definitely an eye-opening experience for a lot of folks, Kalamazoo County COC's Bosch, says. 

Shutterstock"One of the big reasons we try to recruit as many volunteers as possible is to make sure we can give people that experience. We are really lucky to have government representatives from different municipalities and other folks...." as volunteers. 

Some volunteers are with the city governments of Kalamazoo and Portage. Hopefully, they see that the housing needs are growing, Bosch says.

PIT data has yet to be released (last year's PIT count results came out in August ). But so far, in the 2025 data "we expect to see an unprecedented number of folks who are experiencing sheltered homelessness this year," Bosch says.

Sheltered, because due to the bitterly cold winter, people have been driven to accept offers of hotel rooms from efforts such as Kalamazoo Together for the Unhoused's "Heads in Beds" program. 

These efforts "made sure a large number of folks were off the streets and were warm and safe on the night of the point-in-time count," Bosch says.

Results might've been different if it was warmer, with more people living outside, but information showing how people shelter during the PIT "is really useful locally because it shows us that there's a large portion of folks in our community that would accept an offer of shelter, you know, if it met their needs." 

There is a need for a variety of shelter options, Bosch says. 

Included in the PIT count is an HIC, a housing inventory count, "that looks at the availability of shelter, of transitional housing, and also of permanent housing resources," she says.

"That data paired with our point-in-time count data is incredibly valuable to show us that picture of what resources are available in our community, how those resources are being used, and where those gaps are."

What's obvious is, that "we do not have enough housing in our community, and in particular, our rapid rehousing resources in our community. That's short-term housing support to get a household back on their feet after an experience of homelessness."

ShutterstockRehousing should include up to three months of rental assistance, for example. "Those resources are becoming incredibly strained in our community. So there is definitely more need than there are resources available."

Other valuable PIT information shows "the racial disparities among folks experiencing homelessness in our community," she says.

The 2024 PIT count showed that where 76% of county residents identify as white, and 12% as Black, 58% of unsheltered single adults were white, and 22% were Black. For homeless but sheltered families, 19% were white and 77% were Black.

"It paints a very clear picture of the disparities among who ends up homeless and who does not when we compare them to county demographics, or even when we compare them to the demographics of folks who are experiencing poverty in our community," Bosch says. "And those racial demographics hold across all household types, but they are especially prevalent among families who are experiencing homelessness."

Does Kalamazoo match the national rate of homelessness, or is the problem greater here than nationally?

"In general, Kalamazoo has seen similar increases in homelessness over the past several years as we've seen nationally," Bosch says. Kalamazoo saw "a 14% increase from 2023 to 2024, and nationally it was very similar."

Nationally, and in Kalamazoo, "the biggest increases over the past several years seem to be among households with children. That's something that we've seen locally as well," she says.

"And then demographically as well, I think Kalamazoo is not unique in the homeless disparities that we see, but I think the extent of the disparity, again, among households with children is greater in Kalamazoo than we may see nationally."

Now it's in HUD's hands? Not yet...

PIT counts are required to take place in January. "We definitely have our wishes that it would be different," Bosch says. 

If it were during warmer weather, more people might be found, showing a more complete picture of homelessness.

"HUD would tell you that there's multiple reasons that they choose January," she says. "They will tell you that they believe it leads to the most accurate count because folks are more likely to seek shelter.

"So while it creates a lot of difficulties for the unsheltered portion of the count, they believe overall it's a more accurate number because the sheltered population is captured and folks are more likely to be seeking shelter when it's cold outside."

Now, with the data collected and ready, Kalamazoo's Continuum of Care is "still waiting from HUD to announce what the data submission process will look like this year," Bosch says.

"I know that there's been a lot of changes at HUD lately, so I'm not sure if there will be changes in how that data is submitted to them. Generally, we wait until HUD has approved our submission before we make that data public."

"I hope that it will be before August, and we'll have to see what HUD -- what timeline HUD is ultimately working under and if there are any changes to the way that we are submitting data to them."
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