Homeless needs survey begins Monday in El Paso County

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (KRDO) -- According to data from Community Health Partnership, El Paso County makes up 14-15% of homelessness in the state of Colorado.

On Monday, Jan. 23, Community Health Partnership and the Pikes Peak Continuum of Care will begin conducting their annual survey on homelessness. It counts how many people are experiencing homelessness and need services in El Paso County.

The key to the survey is to find out who is sleeping unsheltered versus sheltered in an emergency setting.

Volunteers will be finding people through groups like Homeward Pikes Peak, The Place, Rocky Mountain Human Services, Catholic Charities, Westside Cares, the Pikes Peak Library District, and outreach teams with the City of Colorado Springs.

Volunteers will be providing incentive bags with things like hang warmers, socks, hygiene items, and food.

In this survey, homelessness includes people in an emergency shelter, transitional housing program, or people sleeping unsheltered in an area not designated as a regular accommodation. Such as a car, abandoned building, bus station, park bench, or airport.

"It's really helpful for us as we are looking at strategies where access points are for people to access services and helps us as a community make sense of where to direct our attention for funds, programming, and services," Senior Manager of Homeless Initiatives at Community Health Partnership Evan Caster said.

The method of the survey is for volunteers to go out and ask un-housed people where they slept Sunday night, Jan. 22. They also ask how long they've been homeless and what caused their homelessness so it can be addressed.

"We turn in all those numbers to HUDD and it helps us as a community to get a sense of who's experiencing homelessness," Caster said. "It allows funders and our federal partners to make decisions on what sort of programming we need to be funding in the community to support those who are un-housed."

It also helps them get a sense of how many beds are utilized out of what's available. As well as demographics.

"Goals like getting people connected to emergency shelter, safe and stable housing in their housing journey," Caster said. "Things like looking at permanent housing solutions like housing vouchers and directing those to service providers in our community."

That could be vocational rehab, training, short-term rental assistance, long-term housing vouchers, or shelter stays. All those factors go into consideration.

"Last year our numbers, we saw a dramatic reduction in unsheltered homelessness," Caster said. "A lot of this we attribute to having new permanent housing solutions in our community which were successful, and maximizing the use of our emergency shelters."

This data released in the spring helps communities understand why people lose their housing and, in turn, how communities can design responsive programs that ensure homelessness is a rare, brief, and non-recurring phenomenon.

For example, last year in the survey they saw a large increase in the number of people fleeing domestic violence situations and stalking.