Thurston County’s homeless count starts Thursday. Here’s what’s different this year
Thurston County’s annual homeless census, when officials and volunteers conduct a count of all the people experiencing homelessness at one point in time, is taking place on Thursday, Feb. 24, this year, rather than the end of January. But that’s not the only difference.
This year’s count will see the return of surveying, and it will technically be a week long in an attempt to reach more people throughout the county.
Over the years, the annual count has proven to be unreliable, often underrepresenting those experiencing homelessness. In January 2021, the county found 1,145 people were experiencing homelessness, which included people who are unsheltered, sheltered or in transitional housing.
County staff have cautioned against comparing the yearly numbers due to the highly variable nature of what is a measure of one discrete moment in time. This was made even more difficult last year because there were fewer volunteers to help with surveying individuals, and some numbers relied solely on headcounts.
In previous counts there had been resource fairs that would draw people from more rural areas around the county. Last year those didn’t take place due to the COVID-19 pandemic, limiting the numbers even more.
On top of that, the observational approach in 2021 meant volunteers didn’t need participants’ consent to be counted. In contrast, 2020’s count included only those who agreed to a survey and excluded more than 300 people who declined to be interviewed.
Last year, the majority of the data came from the city of Olympia but also included data from Lacey, Tumwater and Yelm, though some encampments in Lacey and Tumwater weren’t counted, according to previous reporting from The Olympian.
This data is combined and released nationally as part of the Annual Homelessness Assessment Report by the Department of Housing and Urban Development.
In a presentation to prospective volunteers for this year’s count, Arielle Benson, homeless program specialist for the city of Olympia, said the count typically takes place at the end of a month to ensure that people who can only pay for housing for part of a month are generally included in the count.
“For example, some people can afford to stay in a motel, but only for the first few weeks after receiving their public benefits payment at the beginning of the month,” the presentation said.
This year, when the initial count takes place Feb. 24, buttons will be handed out to those who have taken the survey to ensure they’re not interviewed more than once, and Benson said volunteers will hand out hand-crank, solar-powered flashlights to individuals who complete the survey.
The survey only asks for basic identifying information and those conducting the survey have to be given verbal consent from individuals to use their information in the census.
Individuals who work with the city will be assisted by police to gather numbers for those living in RVs and other vehicles.
Following the day count, encampment counts will start the morning of Feb. 25 and finish up Feb. 28. Then, shelter and service providers will be counting individuals they missed who are accessing services as well as those in more rural areas.
In addition to the unsheltered count, the report also pulls data from the Homeless Management Information System, which emergency shelters and transitional housing providers report to regularly.
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