On a single night in late January, volunteers from around the city will conduct a census of Austin’s most vulnerable residents, counting as many people experiencing homelessness as possible.
This biennial point-in-time count is overseen by Austin’s Ending Community Homelessness Coalition, which hopes to recruit some 1,200 volunteers to canvass areas of the city and Travis County. It comes on the heels of a national report that found homelessness reached record levels in 2024.
“The PIT Count is crucial for obtaining a snapshot of homelessness on a given night, providing vital data on the number of individuals in emergency shelters, transitional housing or living unsheltered,” said David Gray, Austin’s homeless strategy officer, in a memo addressed to City Council.
The local survey is required by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, which uses the data collected to gauge the extent of homelessness in communities throughout the country. The data also impacts the funding that local, state and federal agencies allocate for homeless services.
Matthew Mollica, the executive director of ECHO, told KUT that the point-in-time count has some limitations; it is assumed to be an undercount, as it’s difficult to track down every person who is unsheltered on a given night. Some folks may be sleeping, at work or staying in encampments that are hard to find. ECHO also maintains a separate running estimate of the homeless population that is based on incoming requests for housing and assistance, and that estimate tends to be higher.
But Mollica said the PIT count offers important insight into where unsheltered people are staying. In 2023, for instance, the survey showed that folks had moved out of the downtown area after the city reinstated bans on public camping and sleeping outside.
“It is important to understand geographically where folks are dispersed, especially if they’re being moved out of downtown and out of some of the areas where our services are located,” he said.
He said the PIT count also currently provides the closest thing to an “apples to apples” comparison of homelessness between various communities for HUD.
“HUD feels like it’s the only way that communities across the country can complete a count the same way,” Mollica said. “It’s something that everyone has control over, going out and counting folks in one night.”
HUD recently released its national 2024 point-in-time count, which reported the highest levels of homelessness since the counts began in 2007. More than 770,000 homeless individuals across the U.S. were counted on a single night in January 2024 – an 18 percent increase from the previous year. HUD noted that a lack of affordable housing and the end of pandemic-era eviction bans were significant factors in this increase.
ECHO is required to complete the local PIT count only every other year; the most recent count was in 2023 and found 2,374 people experiencing homelessness on a single night. Of that number, 1,108 were sleeping in shelters or transitional housing, and the rest were unsheltered.
According to HUD data, Austin-Travis County had an estimated 2,975 homeless residents in January 2024. While ECHO did not hold a full PIT count last year, it did submit an updated count of sheltered homeless residents to HUD, which HUD added to the number of unsheltered residents counted in ECHO’s 2023 PIT count to arrive at its estimate.
Mollica said Austin, like other areas of the country, has seen an increase in homelessness that is related to high housing costs.
“Austin has done a lot over the last couple of years to try to create more permanent housing,” he said. “We’ve increased our shelter capacity quite substantially, but that’s come along with an increase in rents, and cost-burdened households continue to increase in our community.”
Austin’s 2025 PIT count will begin the night of Saturday, Jan. 25, and extend through the early morning hours on Sunday, Jan. 26. Volunteers will be assigned to survey individuals in various geographic regions of the county and will have care kits on hand. They may also share information about community resources.
Mollica said the PIT count serves as an opportunity to educate new volunteers about the local issue of homelessness and hopefully keep them involved.
“That’s a really important job, to understand how to talk to folks in the middle of the night that are sleeping in those conditions, and how to do that in a trauma-informed way,” he said.
Volunteers can register for the PIT count at austinecho.org.
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ECHO: The Ending Community Homelessness Coalition (ECHO) is, according to its website, "a collaborative funding and planning nonprofit that is fiercely committed to ending homelessness in Austin, TX." The groups brings together resources to serve the city's homeless population and works with agencies to bring together leaders, volunteers and other nonprofits to help the cause.
