Thanks to everyone who recently braved the col weather to find people living on the land in their communities for the annual Point-In-Time count, like these volunteers with Columbus’s Community Shelter Board and the Ashtabula County Continuum of Care. While not a perfect census, the PIT Count is a helps us to better understand who is struggling with homelessness so that we can advocate for the resources necessary to provide homeless services, with the ultimate goal of ending homelessness in our community.
Communities across the U.S. hold their annual PIT counts during the last 10 days of January. The 2018 PIT count in Ohio’s 80 non-urban counties known collectively as the Balance of State Continuum of Care (BoSCoC) took place on Jan. 23.
This year, in addition to the regular PIT count, Southeast Ohio is also developing new strategies to better count and understand their homeless youth population. This effort is a part of the Southeast Ohio Youth Homelessness Demonstration Program, a HUD-funded initiative to end youth homelessness in the region. Southeast Ohio was one of only 10 regions in the U.S. to win a federal YHDP grant this year.
COHHIO has three webinars available on our website to help prepare local communities to conduct the required PIT count. The first will be an overview of the PIT and HIC (Housing Inventory Count) processes and why we do them, the second is an overview PIT volunteer training, and the third is a focus on youth PIT count. For more information on PIT and HIC, visit the BoSCoC Point in Time Count page.
