2022 HIC PIT Report

HUD and the Continuums of Care use the data from PIT counts to evaluate the effectiveness of local agencies' efforts to address homelessness and to seek funding from Congress for homeless services in the country. Coupled with the Housing Inventory Count (HIC), a summary of the state’s capacity to meet the needs of its citizens experiencing homelessness, these numbers are guideposts. Since the first count in 2005, we have gotten better at estimating these numbers. Using an increasingly robust data system we are able to more accurately capture the utilization of our homeless housing services system as well as capture information known about those living outdoors (“the unsheltered”). Known as HMIS (Homeless Management Information System), this database has all but replaced the need for a one-night physical paper-and-pen count on the streets of Connecticut during the wee hours of the night on a cold late January day (the required timeframe from HUD).

Advancing CT Together coordinated the 2022 PIT and HIC along with our partners, the CT Coalition to End Homelessness, which manages HMIS, Housing Innovations, LLC, and Nutmeg Consulting, LLC alongside the tireless service providers that serve the men, women, youth, families, and veterans experiencing homelessness every night of the year.

Each number in the report represents real-life persons and families with hopes, dreams, and the right to be stably housed. We hope that reviewing these numbers will inspire challenging and solutions-based dialogue.

Before the COVID-19 Global Pandemic, street outreach volunteers would work alongside homelessness programs and agencies to canvas for homeless community members. They would identify “high probability areas,” where they would likely find people living in areas not intended for human habitation.

Beginning in 2021, the State of CT PIT count methodology has discontinued the service-based piece of the Point-in-Time (PIT) Count. By doing this, we removed the canvassing of areas and discontinued the surveys to collect self-reported data. As a result, we used data compiled from the Homeless Management Information System (HMIS), the primary source for reporting PIT Data. The data was supplemented with real-time data collected by local Coordinated Access Networks (CAN’s). Those agencies that do not use HMIS could report their PIT findings by manually entering their data points directly into the PIT Database (Developed and managed by Nutmeg IT).