I'm a peacock, you gotta let me fly.
Wow.
Can peacocks fly?
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Welcome back, everybody, to episode three
of the County Connection podcast.
I'm Paul Jewell, government relations director
for the Washington State Association of Counties.
And we are back this time with Curtis Steinhauer again.
Curtis, good to see you.
How's things?
Thanks, Paul.
It's good to be here.
Sessions just moving along, drinking from a fire hose.
Yeah, you've been out doing any fishing recently
on your days off?
I have.
I got out for the snow day on Sunday.
Quite successful steelhead fishing
down at Grace Harbor.
Paul, you know that's a secret.
I don't know if I can trade those kind of tricks.
I heard it was the old nuch.
Paul, Paul, you're burning bridges here.
It's a big river.
There's lots of people.
You don't have to give up your fishing spot on the river.
But I heard it was the one, the Wynuchi, the Great Wynuchi
River, is that right?
If you never hear from me again, it's
because my fishing buddies have heard this podcast.
Well, I'm glad you're getting out and spending
a little time outdoors.
It's good to take a break occasionally.
What do you want to talk about today?
So I wanted to talk about the homeless point in time
count that every county is responsible for doing right now
on an annual basis and some things we're
doing to address the current situation, which is not ideal.
OK, well, let's start at the beginning then.
What is the annual homeless point in time count?
You said that all the counties are
supposed to be doing that now.
Let's talk about exactly what it is.
So coming out of the Great Recession,
there was a push federally to create a consistent annual
census of the unsheltered homeless population
in every community.
So this is an effort that's spearheaded
by the Department of Housing and Urban Development
at the federal level.
They create all of the structure around the count
and the criteria for what counts as homeless,
all the different data collection elements.
And then they send out directives
to every local government.
Each state does it a little bit differently.
Who's responsible?
In Washington state, as of 2013, counties
are responsible for administering this homeless
point in time count.
So when you're saying every county,
you mean every county in the entire country.
So not every county in the entire country.
It's a little bit different.
And especially in states like Louisiana,
where they have parishes in that county.
Or boroughs.
Massachusetts, where they have townships.
So in some states have chosen to have cities
or regional bodies.
Really what makes counties responsible
in Washington state is the 2013 legislation
that created the local document recording fee originally
and created this imperative for counties
to be the local government entity that plans
to address homelessness in their community.
And that has had many updates and gone
through many iterations, that original legislation.
But it eventually led to the current situation
where counties execute five year plans to address homelessness.
And as a part of that five year plan,
they're required to be the entity that
does the annual point in time count
and kind of use that as a benchmark number
for how many homeless people are in the community.
At the beginning of this count, it
was only unsheltered homeless people.
So that's people who are sleeping outside tonight.
And the count was one night, once a year,
counting everyone that slept outside in your community.
So is it the same?
OK, so this is happening all across the country,
but it's done differently in different states.
In Washington, it's the responsibility of the county.
And you're saying that the point in time count is exactly that.
You pick a date, and you go out, and it's
how many people are unhoused in the county
on that particular date.
So what I'm saying is it was that.
Oh, it was that.
Yes.
Was it the same date across the state?
So whether you were in King County?
Thursday in January.
OK.
Every place in the country.
OK.
So on that date, everybody was doing it.
Yep.
In the whole country?
Whole country.
OK.
But it sounds like it's not that way now.
It's went through many iterations.
So it was expanded at some point along the way
to include what we call sheltered homeless as well.
It's a pretty broad definition at the federal level.
It includes people staying in shelters, people staying
in permanent supportive housing units.
It also includes people couch surfing.
But because those are notoriously hard to count,
usually it's just a count of how many individuals
are staying in publicly subsidized supportive housing,
like an emergency shelter, a transitional housing unit,
or a permanent supportive housing.
OK.
Let's go back really quickly though.
So you're saying that it's expanded from just the people
that were sleeping outside and essentially unsheltered
to also include people who were in shelters.
But then you mentioned couch surfers,
which for some people, if they were in California,
they might envision something quite different than what
we typically might think of for surfing in Washington state.
But either way, that's not what you mean.
So tell us what you mean by couch surfers.
Couch surfers, it's a colloquial term.
That is not a standard definition.
But we're just referring to people
who are living in what they'd call
transient housing situations.
So they are staying with a friend or a family member.
They do not have a home.
They aren't on the title or the lease.
Going from place to place maybe.
Sometimes.
So the strict federal definition,
it's really hard to count this with people.
But the strict federal definition
is they don't stay in one place for more than 30 days.
So that's what this point in time is trying to capture then.
That's what this count is trying to capture.
People that are unsheltered might be sleeping outside
in a tent, in their car, on the street, whatever it may be.
People who are sheltered in some type of housing.
This doesn't include affordable housing.
This would be, this is actual shelters.
Yeah, well it also includes permanent supportive housing,
which is for people who are disabled
and can never live on their own, it's permanent rent assistance
essentially.
So they get counted in this too, even if they're in that housing?
Yep, in the sheltered homeless count.
The idea being if they didn't have a subsidy,
they would be homeless.
And then couch surfers.
Yes.
So that's kind of the big categories.
Right.
And we're kind of getting into this expansion
of what the point in time count was supposed to be.
And as this expansion happened, it
became very clear nationwide that many, most jurisdictions
had absolutely no capacity and administrative capability
to do a one night census of their entire county.
Yeah, how would you pull that off?
Not well.
Yeah.
Yeah, is the answer.
And so the federal government expanded it at some point.
They said you don't have to do it on the one night.
You have to do something on the one night
that is the bulk of the census.
You can actually count people, gather your data,
complete your census over that third week in January.
Over a week now.
Not really a point in time anymore.
So how is it actually done then?
So in Washington, which is what we're talking about today,
most counties have a housing coordinator.
That housing coordinator will plan this point in time count.
And every county does it differently.
Some counties literally go to places
they know unsheltered people are.
And they walk around with a clipboard
and collect information from every unsheltered person
they're able to contact.
And they'll count people too if the people refuse information,
but they just won't record their demographics.
So when you say places where they know unsheltered people
are, so you're talking like maybe an emergency shelter.
This time of year it could be a warming shelter.
That's a sheltered count.
And that actually happens automatically
because the service provider is bound by contract
if they receive public funding to turn that data over to.
So they keep track of that.
So you're not talking about people
that would be in a shelter of some kind.
Talking about people on the street.
So maybe an encampment.
Yep, encampments.
And like when I did this in Grace Harbor,
we would drive around and note there's
a motor home that's not plugged in right there that clearly
has people living in it.
OK.
Go knock on the door.
OK.
We knew places where kind of outside the cities,
there was like a private property owner with a lot
that he would let people camp in.
We'd go there.
There's obvious places downtown that everyone
knows about where homeless people congregate.
We'd go there.
But that's really impracticable.
And when this was early on and everyone I think was bought in
and like this would be a good thing to have an annual census
and a data point you can track over time.
But as time went on, just the impracticality
of doing this kind of count.
Not to mention the administrative burden.
Well, how do you even make sure it's accurate?
You don't.
It's not.
How do you avoid double counting people?
How do you not miss people?
I mean, even if you're driving around,
you could go around the corner and then come back
around another corner.
And they could have been there two minutes ago.
And now they're gone.
And you've driven by and you don't see them.
Yes.
It just seems really unrealistic.
Yes, it's completely unrealistic.
And that becomes obvious if you do it for a number of years.
And it's not supposed to be a comprehensive census.
It's supposed to be a point in time count, a data point
that you can track over time.
It's like a sample of the homeless population.
OK.
On that night, we were able to contact these people this year.
And we were able to contact 10 less people next year.
And the thing is that there are several funding sources that
are based off this number.
Well, that's what I was going to ask,
is what's the point of doing this?
Yeah, so there's.
Besides just tracking it, right?
So I guess tracking it helps you see the trend from year to year
and might be an indicator if you're making progress
in reducing homelessness or the unhoused in your community.
But that may not.
I mean, that's how do you know if you're.
How do you know that if your accounts aren't accurate?
But you said there's also funding tied
to these counts themselves.
Correct.
OK.
The best part is when for political reasons,
either the state of Washington or the federal government
changes the criteria of the difference between sheltered
and unsheltered to show purposely a decrease
in the shelter population.
This happened in 2017.
And I don't know that we lost funding
because it's all proportional, right?
Everyone changed.
But you look on the year by year count and you see a decrease.
And anyone who worked in homelessness during that time
know that's a fabrication.
And so it's this for county housing coordinators,
it's just such a frustrating thing.
Because every year you have to take away time
where if you weren't doing this enormous lift to plan
this big census.
And in addition to the going out on the street,
we'll hold resource fairs.
We'll gather every social service, barbers, clothing
banks, any kind of service that would benefit
an unsheltered homeless person.
We'll find a central location and we'll
hold the resource fair.
And people who show up to the resource fair
get counted in the point in time count.
And they get all these services.
You can sign people up for all the services
they need for the year right there.
Which is really convenient.
But man, is it a lot to do.
And it's a lot to do.
How do you even, I mean it's not as if you can just advertise,
hey if you're homeless on a.
Oh yeah, we did.
Really?
Yep, annual point in time count.
Come down, get a free cell phone.
Did you hand out flyers?
Yep, flyers.
And I mean they all have phones, Facebook posts.
You work with your local provider,
in Gray's Harbors case Coastal Community Action
Program, every community has kind
of a parallel organization.
I know you from Kittitas County, that would have been,
help me remember the name.
Hope Source.
Hope Source, thank you.
Shout out to Hope Source.
Right.
If you're out there listening, we love you.
Yes.
So these organizations, they know their clientele.
They know how to get word to them.
And they will.
And we had tremendous turnout to those.
But it would be from mid-November
through the day of the point in time count.
That would be the main point of my job
when I was at Gray's Harbor.
Which is taking time away from grant management of programs
that are actually serving people.
Right.
Development activities where I could be finding other funding
or doing planning.
And so instead of out there doing outreach,
doing direct services, you had to do this.
Yeah, we're checking this federal regulation box
that we know is not an accurate count.
And on top of that, Washington has
developed an incredible database system
to track homelessness called the Homelessness Management
Information System, HMIS.
And every publicly funded program in Washington State,
from an emergency shelter to a street outreach program
to a permanent supportive housing program,
they have to put data into HMIS.
So we already know all of these people.
And we know in a time series data,
when they change programs, it's recorded.
When they obtain permanent housing
and are paying their own rent, it's recorded.
So this HMIS system that you're talking about
actually keeps track of.
It sounds to me, you didn't say this,
but it sounds to me, say I'm a person experiencing
homelessness, I go in for services to an agency
that's funded by the state of Washington.
That agency now has an obligation
to capture my information and put me into this database.
And I suppose that information's going to follow me
if I go to this food bank or I go to that food bank
or I go to maybe a church or a homeless shelter or whatever,
it's going to kind of log me in or at least make
a note of my presence at those places at different times?
So food banks don't do this.
Oh, they don't, okay.
Yep, some churches might, some faith-based programs.
Really, it's a place you'll stay the night.
Oh, okay, so a shelter of some kind.
Or case management.
Case management's also gonna.
Sure.
And so, but it's really good data.
It's better data than the point in time count.
Does it ever match up?
Have you ever taken the point in time count
and looked at the point in time count?
It never matches up.
How far off, okay, how far off is it?
So ballpark numbers here,
because I'm reaching back into my career a few years ago.
Oh, we're gonna hold you to this.
So we did a point in time count one year in Grace Harbor
that showed about 80, it was between 50 and 100
unsheltered people.
In Grace Harbor County.
And it showed less than 400 total homeless people
in Grace Harbor, where we have over a thousand people
in HMIS that are currently accessing services.
So your point in time count was basically half.
Yeah, oh yes.
Of what your population actually is.
And we estimate, there's some portion of people,
especially the couch surfing portion,
that's not reaching out for services.
So there's even more than that.
Yeah, we expect it's probably,
the point in time count that we did that year
probably counted 20% of the population of people
who are in unstable housing situations.
Wow, wow, that's pretty frustrating.
And it's frustrating that three months of your year,
that's the main thing you're working toward
when you know the count is unreliable.
It is just to check a regulatory box.
Interesting, well, we're not talking about this
for no reason.
We aren't.
Right, there's some changes being proposed this year
in the legislature.
So first, we get to the pandemic, right?
And the federal government during the pandemic
completely changed gears on this point in time count.
Right.
It used to be annual, they moved it to semi-annual.
Oh, so now we're doing it twice.
No, every other year.
Oh, every other year.
Yes. Okay.
And they moved it, I should say biennial, I guess.
Not semi-annual.
So they moved it to a biennial count,
and instead of it being statutory required date
that everyone knows when the date's coming,
HUD sends out a notice,
and then everyone gets their stuff in gear
and plans the count.
And they made the unsheltered count,
the part where you go out and census
every part of your community optional.
They changed a whole bunch of their regulations.
And Washington statute is still the statute
from 2015 or 17 or whenever the last time it was updated.
So we went through the pandemic,
federal government has completely changed their approach
to this and Washington state statute hasn't been updated.
And we have to abide by the Washington statute
because it can be more stringent,
have more requirements than the federal statute, not less.
And as you know, have to sometimes a funny word
with federal or state regulations.
So I know that there are some counties,
I won't name names here,
that have started abiding by the federal guidance
and not the state statute.
There's other counties who most small counties,
they just don't have a prosecutor's office
that's gonna come with a heavy interpretation
and say, we don't have to abide by the state statute anymore.
So all this to say,
we've worked with a few new members of the house,
Representative Zahn and Representative Thomas.
And we've introduced a bill that aligns the state statute
with the current federal guidance.
This is House Bill 1899.
And so this bill got introduced today.
It would be a huge lift off of county housing coordinators,
especially in small communities,
who now will only have to do that housing point in time
count, homelessness point in time counting, excuse me,
when HUD sends out the notice to count.
Okay, so it aligns our requirements
with the federal requirements.
Okay, so let's just repeat that really quickly.
So you've got a bill,
you worked with Rep Zahn and Rep Thomas,
shout out to Rep Zahn and Rep Thomas,
thanks for your help on this one.
And the bill number is House Bill 1899.
That's correct.
And the bottom line with the bill is it aligns
our requirements at the state level
with the federal requirements.
And you think that will make it easier
for service providers to do this point in time count?
At the very least, it cuts our burden in half.
Okay, oh wow, that's a big, well, that's a big change.
Right, right.
It's every other year instead of annually.
And it makes it so that when there's a federal change
going forward, we don't have to change state statute
to get there.
The bill directs the local governments
to respond to the point in time count notice
of the Department of Housing and Urban Development
rather than have a state statutory count every so often.
Is it gonna make the count more accurate?
No, it's not.
It's still not gonna make the count more accurate.
No, but we're just beholden to some of the federal funding
that both the federal funding that flows directly
through counties occasionally, but mostly the federal funding
that flows through the state to counties,
it's this point in time count's a requirement.
So in order to access those funds,
you've gotta complete this work.
Like you said, check the box.
Correct, and some of the allocations
are based on that count.
Oh, okay, okay, interesting.
Well, that's good stuff.
Does the bill do anything else?
It also eliminates, there were some requirements early on
when we didn't know what this work was gonna be like
to do some reporting on the quality of the work being done.
There was a statute that requires this quality assessment
and then a language in the point in time count statute
that tied the point in time count to that requirement.
The requirement's been released, that's been taken out.
That's a small part of the bill.
There's been some technical cleanups, yes.
That's good.
So once again, House Bill 1899, it was just dropped today,
right? Correct.
So you don't have a hearing date or anything yet,
maybe hopefully next week?
We don't, I've talked to, we think it's gonna be referred
to House Housing Committee, of course,
and I've talked to Chair Peterson about this
and it sounds like we're gonna have a hearing
when the bill gets referred.
Well, certainly our members can look out for the bill
when it gets scheduled for a hearing.
If they're interested in taking part in that,
they can contact you directly via email
or give you a call, is that right?
That's right.
Okay, well, it doesn't sound like it's gonna make
the count any more accurate,
but at least it'll make it easier on our agencies.
That'll save time, that'll save money,
they can get more direct services dollars down
to the people that need them, that need the assistance,
and they'll be meeting this requirement
for federal grant money just in an easier way.
That's right, and I think that on the problem
of the count being more accurate,
again, we have this HMIS data system that's very accurate
and a lot of our state funding uses that.
When your county puts, your county housing coordinator
creates an annual data report that reports
on the progress of your five-year plan,
they're using HMIS data, not the point in time count.
Sometimes they'll reference the point in time count,
but this HMIS data really is the golden ticket
in terms of tracking the homelessness population,
but there's some portions of the unsheltered population
that that misses because they're not accessing services,
and the good thing about introducing this bill
and the conversations I've had both with the representatives
that are sponsoring and also with other members
on the housing committee is kind of a recognition
that this is a broken system and a little bit of a commitment
to do some work and try to come back
and improve that process.
So we'll see how that goes.
Yeah, well, hopefully you'll have some good luck
with your bill, good testimony at the hearing coming up
whenever it gets scheduled, and we'll get this thing moving
through the system and all the way to the end game
at the end of April.
Thanks for coming by and chatting with us today, Curtis.
Really, really interesting stuff
about the point in time count.
Hopefully you're gonna get out and be able to do
a little bit more fishing this weekend, maybe?
Oh, no, probably not.
Super Bowl Sunday, so I got some chicken wings to make.
Priorities, I guess.
So where was that that you were going fishing again?
Secret Spot, point B out by No Tellum Creek, is that right?
Yes, No Tellum Creek, there you go.
All right, it's a steelhead time of year, isn't it?
It is, yeah.
How big are the steelhead?
Well, you know, it really varies.
We think the ones we were catching last week,
between five and eight pounds, you know?
That's not bad.
Not bad at all.
My biggest steelhead I've ever caught out there
is a big wild one off the Queets River is about 18 pounds.
Yeah, that's a big steely.
My dad was a guide.
He's seen several over 30 to the boat.
That's a really big steely.
Yeah.
All right.
Well, good fishing to you.
Hopefully it'll be a good game this weekend.
Thanks for coming by and chatting
about the point in time count.
We'll see you soon.
Take care.
Thanks, Paul.
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