THE DALLES — Members of the Mid-Columbia Houseless Collaborative are completing the 2024 Point in Time (PIT) Count this week in Hood River, Wasco, Sherman, Klickitat, and Skamania counties.
The annual PIT Count is a federally mandated survey of people experiencing houselessness in communities across the country. The count, which occurs in late January of every year, plays a critical role in determining the level of state and federal funding communities receive to address houselessness. It also provides key insight into the needs of those impacted by houselessness. This includes the impact houselessness has on communities who have historically faced inequitable barriers to safe and affordable housing, such as communities of color.
Houseless community members have the opportunity to access the supplies and housing stabilization services outreach case workers offer when conducting the count. With snow-covered communities across the gorge still digging out from mid-January’s significant winter storm, these outreach efforts are even more meaningful than usual.
“Houseless Collaborative partners already had been working hard to coordinate the outreach that took place earlier this month to prepare for the storm that posed life-threatening risks to our houseless community members,” said Senior Native American Community Health Worker Rosie Strange, Bridges to Health Pathways Program and Columbia Gorge Health Council. “In some cases, the PIT Count represents the first opportunity outreach staff have to go back to sites where we were dropping off warming bundles or helping make shelter referrals before the snow and ice shut everything down.”
The 2024 PIT Count will be the second count to be conducted in the region since the formation of the MidColumbia Houseless Collaborative. In 2022 the Mid-Columbia region’s leading houselessness assistance providers on both sides of the Columbia River, Mid-Columbia Community Action Council (MCCAC) and Washington Gorge Action Programs (WAGAP), founded the Mid-Columbia Houseless Collaborative. The Collaborative, which includes nearly 40 organizations, local governments, and individuals from Hood River, Wasco, Sherman, Skamania, and Klickitat counties, has been working to implement its five-year strategic plan focused on improving coordinated efforts to prevent and respond to houselessness.
Each year since it was founded, the Collaborative has emphasized better PIT Count coordination between housing assistance organizations, culturally specific service providers, health care partners, and social service agencies. This collaboration is a priority in the Houseless Collaborative’s strategic plan, which aims to give the region more accurate data about the area’s houseless population — and how to serve houseless communities more effectively. PIT Count coordination has gone more and more smoothly as Collaborative members have deepened their partnerships in alignment with other goals in the strategic plan.
“Many of the same organizations we’ve been convening for the past year to discuss innovative plans for expanding our region’s behavioral health and housing continuum are now putting boots on the ground to conduct the PIT Count together,” said Executive Director Al Barton, Mid-Columbia Center for Living.
“Given the prevalence of behavioral health and substance use challenges in last year’s PIT Count data, we are glad to be helping with this year’s count — and once it’s complete, we will pivot right back to our other coordinated efforts to address the region’s behavioral health and affordable housing challenges.”
Those who wish to support the work of the Mid-Columbia Houseless Collaborative or learn more about the Collaborative’s strategic plan can visit www.midcolumbiahouselesscollaborative.org, or contact Development and Engagement Coordinator Sarah Kellems at skellems@mccac.com.
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Kelli Horvath is director of the office of housing stabilization at Mid-Columbia Community Action Council.
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