FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. — Efforts are underway to assess the number of people struggling with homelessness across Northwest Arkansas.
All of the numbers are combined for statewide and national counts.
The University of Arkansas's social work department partnered with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Continuum of Care Program and local nonprofits in Northwest Arkansas—to oversee the point-in-time count.
“From a certain perspective, it serves as a middle entity between HUD, and some local service providers on funding for intervention for folks who are unhoused,” said John Gallagher associate professor at the University of Arkansas school of social work.
The operation is separate from the normal census that’s taken every 10 years, and the process is sponsored by the Department of Housing and Urban Development.
“They require each continuum of care to conduct a census of individuals and families experiencing homelessness at least every two years, and our COC like many across the country chooses to do it every year just to have better data, so we’ll still report to HUD but we like to have an understanding here locally,” Gallagher explained.
Leaders say volunteer surveying will start Thursday night with a majority of the leg work happening during the day on Friday. The survey is being conducted across four counties in Northwest Arkansas. Those counties include Benton, Carroll, Madison, and Washington, but there are a few reasons why they go through this process.
“It’s important to document how many people in the community are experiencing homelessness and it see how the number changes over time. and also the characteristics… what are people’s makeup, what are people’s needs,” said Gallagher.
Gallagher reports that based on the data that's collected, it's funding emergency shelters, salvation army facilities in Fayetteville and Bentonville, housing prep providers program, and programs associated with Veteran affairs. The organizations will have teams of volunteers who go out and conduct interviews.
"Most of the time it's volunteers or staff within the organization already, for example, the domestic violence shelters, they generally don't want outside volunteers coming in for privacy and confidential reasons," Gallagher explained.
The CEO of 7hills homeless center in Fayetteville says the point-in-time count is important to their shelter because it determines funding for services.
“And so, if our point in time count is less than what is actual…that means our region is receiving fewer dollars to support homeless services so it's really important that we get an accurate point in time count because of the impact it has on those federal dollars,” Mike Williams explained.
Williams says there’s a special reason why it takes place once a year;
“When the weather is bad, and it’s cold we know that we’re at our peak service time that time of year.” So that’s why at this point in time, this point of the year was selected,” said Williams.
The social work department at the U of A says some data will be available next week but the final presentation to the public will take place in April.
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