Homelessness decreased 15 percent in three years, in large part due to pandemic interventions.

In the early morning hours of Thursday and Friday Jan. 27 and 28, over 80 trained volunteers fanned out throughout Monterey County looking for anyone they could find who was without housing, either in encampments, tucked-away tents, parked cars or shelter beds. It was the first point-in-time count in three years, having been waylaid by the Covid-19 pandemic.

The results this time were encouraging to homeless advocates: 2,047 people without homes, a 15-percent decrease since the last count in 2019.

“We do in fact make a difference when we work together, and homelessness can actually be solved,” said Roxanne Wilson, former executive officer of the Coalition of Homeless Service Providers during the first Lead Me Home Summit on Homelessness on July 14. (Wilson’s last day with CHSP was July 15; she is now the Monterey County Homeless Services director.) “Solving homelessness means that when someone first lands into homlessness, we have an intervention for them.”

It was “aggressive” interventions during the first two years of the pandemic that helped lead to the decrease, Wilson said at the summit. An estimated $52 million flowed into the community from state and federal sources, which, she said, “slowed down the pipeline into homelessness.” Several homeless service agencies that previously did not actively try to house people were pressed into service to get people off the streets.

Wilson also credited the state’s Project Roomkey program, which provided temporary housing with support services in motels and hotels that were otherwise unoccupied in the early days of shelter-in-place.

“[It] was so incredible because we brought the full force of the service provider network,” she said.

Nearly every city saw a decrease in people without homes, except Del Rey Oaks which went from zero to two, and Pacific Grove which went from 14 to 29. (That’s still below the count in P.G. in 2017, which was 35.)

Of the 2,047 who met the criteria for being homeless, 34 percent were in shelters and 66 percent were unsheltered, with 47 percent of those living outdoors with no covering, 28 percent in a tent, 17 percent in a car or van, 5 percent in an abandoned building and 3 percent in an RV.

In addition to the census count, a survey of 287 people was conducted by Applied Survey Research in the following weeks that gathered demographic data, including questions about where respondents are from.

“One thing we hear all the time is, ‘People aren’t from here.’ Guess what? Yes they are,” Wilson said. “Most of them are from here.”

The survey found that 83 percent of respondents said they were living in Monterey County at the time they became homeless, up from 78 percent in 2019. “These are our neighbors,” Wilson said.

The 2022 Monterey County Homeless Count and Survey comprehensive report is available at bit.ly/2022MCPITCount.