NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WKRN) — Volunteers across Nashville conducted the annual “Point-in-Time count and housing inventory count” Thursday night to obtain more information about the city’s unhoused population.
Like other Nashville residents, Lyric Onus told News 2 more needs to be done to help one of the city’s most vulnerable populations.
“Especially in the wintertime, I can only imagine what those people go through. I think about it every night that I go to sleep in my warm bed — that there’s somebody under a bridge,” Onus said. “Anybody doesn’t deserve that.”
In order for the city to provide adequate resources, accurate data are needed. Volunteers, officials and even city leaders like Mayor Freddie O’Connell helped conduct Thursday night’s survey, which is an annual census of people experiencing homelessness required by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) for all communities receiving federal funding to address homelessness.
“It’s about an 11-question survey,” director of the Metro Office of Homeless Services (OHS) April Calvin said. “The questions consist of demographics to ‘How long have you been experiencing homelessness?'”
Over the course of one year, OHS houses 2,000 people on average. The information from this count and survey will help inform the department about what resources are needed and how much city leaders will ask for in federal funding.
“Those are numbers that are used in our annual application. Those are numbers that we look at to make even local decisions on some of the need,” said Calvin. “But it is just that — one point in time. It’s a snapshot. What we know is this is a very dire situation that takes a lot more data collection in order to be able to move forward.”
The data will next be cleaned to verify individuals and eliminate any duplicates. After cleaning, the data will be verified; typically, the results of the count and survey are released in late winter or early spring.
