Once a year, along with communities across the country, we, at the Metro Dallas Homeless Alliance (MDHA), count our homeless friends. This Point in Time Count, a requirement under Federal Law, helps communities understand the extent of homelessness, changing trends, and the measure of their success in making homelessness rare, brief and nonrecurring.
The goal of the Count for this year, as set by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) is more circumspect than in previous years, to measure if homelessness has gone up or down during the COVID-19 pandemic. HUD has explicitly stated that this count will not allow for “apples to apples” comparisons with previous years.
The Count is usually carried out over the course of one night with the help of hundreds of volunteers, with a record setting 1,750 participating in 2020. No one who participates in this activity comes away unaffected. Obviously, gathering 1,750 volunteers this year, and sending them out in teams of 3-5 to interact at length with a medically fragile community, was a “non-starter.”
Therefore, following careful consultation with HUD, we have modified this year’s Count in three ways:
- We will be utilizing homeless rehousing system professional outreach teams, instead of volunteers.
- We will be utilizing a brief survey, which will contain less questions than in previous years.
- The Count will take place over 14 days in the second half of February, rather than on one night at the end of January.
To mark the beginning of the Count, we will come together, virtually, for a COVID-19 Point in Time Homeless Count Kickoff on February 18, 2021, at 11am. The event will feature the Honorable Eric Johnson, Mayor of the City of Dallas, who will be introduced by the Honorable Casey Thomas, II, Dallas City Council Member District 3, Reverend Todd Atkins, of the Salem Institutional Baptist Church, Ashley Brundage, Dallas and Collin Counties’ Continuum of Care Board Chair and Peter Brodsky, MDHA Board Chair, as well as short video from the field, as outreach teams prepare to count. It will be live streamed on Vimeo at https://vimeo.com/504664799
We will have more to share in the next week or two, including sponsorship opportunities, as well as specific login information for the kickoff. We hope you will be able to join us because, though much has changed one thing remains the same, in Dallas and Collin Counties everybody counts.
