The number of homeless people in statewide shelters was the lowest since at least 2009, according to the annual one-day count of people in and out of homeless shelters taken each January.
The 1,174 counted in homeless shelters on one winter day statewide was 9 percent fewer than last year’s figure and the lowest since before 2009, when records from the one-day count began being posted online.
“I think attempts to find people alternatives to shelters, I think that’s working. I think that’s having some impact. We’re trying to help people be more stable in their homes,” said Maureen Ryan, administrator of the Bureau of Homelessness and Housing Services, which oversees what is called the Point In Time count.
“If someone calls looking for shelter, instead of immediately saying, ‘there’s a bed here, go to that shelter.’ We’re asking, ‘What’s going on? Where did you sleep last night? Is there anything that would help you be able stay there longer? Is there somewhere else you can go? The focus is on making shelter truly the last resort . . . Because we know when anyone, especially families, goes into a shelter environment, it’s a lot harder to go back to housing,” Ryan said.
It’s harder to say how the drop in shelter numbers equates to total homelessness, including so-called “unsheltered” people outside or in other housing or those doubled-up with friends. A change in standards from the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development makes comparison with past years difficult: New Hampshire used to count people in hospitals, jails and hotels that they paid for themselves as being unsheltered homeless, but this doesn’t meet HUD guidelines and has been dropped from the state data count.
The one-day count, required by HUD as part of its funding measurements, is one of several pieces of data about homelessness that helps keep track of the problem.
“We have a homeless management information database that is cumulative over the course of the year (and) gives a bigger picture,” Ryan said. “We have other data that we use to look at trends, yearlong data, that helps us to see where resources need to be.”
A piece of encouraging news from the annual count is that the number of homeless veterans is declining. In 2015, 53 veterans were identified as homeless; this year that number was down to 35 on the day of the count and is “now lower still,” Ryan said.
She noted the state’s push to end homelessness in veterans, which includes a weekly call to Gov. Maggie Hassan’s office about the situation.
On the other hand, the data also reflected a major problem: roughly two-thirds of those found by staffers self-identified as having “a severe and persistent mental illness” or having a substance abuse problem.
“The reality is probably higher,” Ryan said, partly because the data depends on people’s self-reporting, and partly because most shelters are sober shelters, so substance abuse issues are more likely to be unsheltered and harder to count.
As is generally the case, by far the largest number of homeless people were reported in Hillsborough County, which includes Manchester and Nashua, followed by Rockingham County on the Seacoast and then Merrimack County, which includes Concord. Merrimack County had 57 single people, plus 47 people in 17 families, in shelters on the day of the count.
(David Brooks can be reached at 369-3313 or dbrooks@cmonitor.com or on Twitter @GraniteGeek)
