How many homeless people live in Columbus? Advocates hold annual count, seek resources

Tyrone Fultz slept in a backyard last night.

The 54-year-old man from Columbus' South Side didn't have anywhere else to go and hasn't for nearly a year.

He came to The Open Shelter on Thursday morning for a meal and is one of hundreds of people who talked to volunteers at shelters across Franklin County on Thursday from 5 a.m. to 5 p.m. as part of the Community Shelter Board's annual "point-in-time" count of people experiencing homelessness. The results of the count will be released in April.

Last year's count by the shelter board of unhoused people found the single largest increase and an all-time high of people experiencing homelessness: 2,337, a 22% increase from 1,912 in 2022. Of those, 1,839 people were living in shelters or transitional housing while the other 498 were living outside or in other spaces not meant to be lived in, such as cars and garages.

More:Amid annual count, much is planned this year in Columbus to help the homeless find housing

Fultz said he lost his mother about a year ago and things got difficult for him.

"I just lost it from there," he said.

Since then, Fultz said he's been sleeping outside, at friends' homes and on couches.

Across town, on the city's Northeast Side, similar efforts to count unhoused people ages 18 to 24 were taking place.

Huckleberry House held its second annual "transition age youth palooza" at the Kenmore Square Community Center, with haircuts, a free store, food truck and other resources.

Alexey Hudson, 21, has lived in the Kenmore Square community, an apartment complex for those ages 18 to 24, for a year. Before that, Hudson had been homeless for five years.

Younger people like Hudson are less likely to identify themselves as being unhoused, said Sonya Thesing, executive director of Huckleberry House, which serves at-risk and homeless youth. They sleep in cars, on couches, in groups outside and often won't go to a shelter, she said.

It's important to count them, said Kyra Crockett-Hodge, the nonprofit's director of community outreach and engagement. But it's also "so much more than counting kids," she said.

"It's how can we make genuine connections with young people," she said.

One way to do this is to offer young people resources such as clothing, home items, and housing and let them know they can trust those at Huckleberry House.

"We want them to be able to rest and say, 'I have dreams, I have goals,'" Crockett-Hodge said. "Our goal is to remove barriers."

Huckleberry House helped Hudson get mental health counseling, identification and to start going to GED classes.

"I'm getting my stuff together," Hudson said of life now. "I do feel safe. That's important."

The homelessness count is part of a national effort by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) to determine the numbers of unhoused individuals across the nation and offer resources and funding accordingly.

HUD's 2023 Annual Homeless Assessment Report estimated that approximately 653,100 people nationwide were experiencing homelessness on a single night in 2023 — a 12% increase (or about 70,650 more people) from 2022.

The increase in people experiencing homelessness at the beginning of 2023 was due in part to a large rise in the number of people who became homeless for the first time, according to Diane M. Shelley, an administrator for HUD's Midwest region. The trend started before the COVID-19 pandemic in 2016. But federal stimulus money, including substantial aid for millions of people who struggled to pay their rent and avoid eviction, help prevent a big jump in people being unhoused from 2020 to 2022, Shelly said.

The COVID relief funding will last through 2024 locally, but has expired in other places, contributing to another rise in homelessness, she said.

After last year's record-breaking rise, the Community Shelter Board asked the county and city for $23.8 million in funding to address homelessness in central Ohio, Isom said.

Shannon Isom, president and CEO of the Community Shelter Board, expects an answer on the funding in February and said it will be used to create a stronger safety net and ways to get people out of shelters and into housing sooner, as the shelter system can't be the answer to the problem of homelessness, she said.

"It's a big ask, but, more importantly, it's an appropriate ask," Isom said of the funding. "Housing is not a commodity — it is a basic need."

She is bracing herself for the numbers from this year, and said she expects an increase, but not on the level of last year's.

More than 200 volunteers participated in the count, which includes searching for people sleeping in cars in parking lots; dropping by soup kitchens, meal sites and warming centers; or seeking those sleeping in known encampments and on the streets.

"All any of us want in this world is to feel seen and heard and the way to do that is to build community," said Sarah Hatchard, director of guest services at The Open Shelter. "You can't begin to understand where people come from unless you offer them a safe space to be themselves."

dking@dispatch.com

@DanaeKing