An annual count of homeless people will take place throughout Fulton County early next week: on Monday in Atlanta, in the county’s northern cities on Tuesday, and in the county’s southern half on Wednesday.
The Point in Time Count gathers details on the homeless population to inform allocation of services. Its results affect the amount of funding local governments get from the Emergency Solutions Grant and Continuum of Care. Those allocations “fund the cornerstones of each community’s homeless system,” said Mia Redd, deputy director of Health & Human Services for Fulton County.
The count is also vital for federal funding, according to Abby Bracewell at Partners for HOME, which manages the program for Atlanta.
The U.S. Department of Housing & Urban Development requires a count of people on the streets and in shelters at least every two years to maintain eligibility for federal homelessness funding, but Atlanta and Fulton County hold a count every year. An exception was 2021 when Atlanta, at least, did not hold a count due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Bracewell said.
The count will be of people living on the streets and other “unsheltered locations” such as in parks or woods, in abandoned buildings and under bridges, in vehicles and other places not meant for habitation. People in shelters and temporary housing will be counted separately.
The county’s planning committee hoped to get 100 volunteers but now has 126 registered, Redd said. Atlanta needed 200 to 300 volunteers for the nighttime count and the daytime counts at shelters and other locations, Bracewell said. Most of those needs had been filled by this week but the agency was still recruiting some backups.
The count is expected to take hours during the evening and nighttime. Volunteers will work in teams, ask questions for a short survey and note the location. Questions include how long someone has lived here, whether they had experienced domestic violence, if they are a veteran and if they’re disabled, according to a Fulton County fact sheet.
Local governments, nonprofit groups and others map known “homeless hot spots” during a planning stage for the count, and volunteers are directed to those spots, according to the county. Redd said homeless camps have been identified in Alpharetta, College Park, Fairburn, Roswell, Sandy Springs and Union City.
In previous years far more homeless people have been counted within the city of Atlanta than elsewhere in Fulton County. During the 2023 count Atlanta found 2,679 people.
“This number includes people who were sleeping outside as well as in emergency shelter and transitional housing,” Bracewell said.
The same year Fulton County counted 337 homeless outside Atlanta city limits: 128 “unsheltered” and 209 in “sheltered locations.” That was up by more than 60 from 2022.
But those numbers are down from pre-COVID. The 2015 count found 4,317 homeless in Atlanta, including more than 1,000 living outdoors. By 2022 that had fallen by more than half to 2,017, including 640 on the streets.
The official definition of homelessness does not cover people who may be couch-surfing or living doubled up with someone else. The survey only identifies the people found on a given night; the number of people homeless over the course of the year is much higher, according to the county. Nor does it address the reasons for homelessness, what might be keeping people from getting housing, or how successful current assistance programs may be.
This year’s results should be available within a few months.
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