30-01-2025
Local Point-in-Time homeless count concludes
EAU CLAIRE—Efforts to count the number of homeless people in Eau Claire, Buffalo, Trempealeau, and Jackson counties concluded Wednesday evening after a week's worth of work.
The biannual Point-in-Time Count began Wednesday, January 22 at 11 p.m. and concluded at 5 p.m. a week later on January 29.
'We do this twice a year,' said Communications Coordinator for Western Dairyland Economic Opportunity Council Dale Karls. 'Once in July, and then we do it again in January. It's really a week long process [to identify] anyone who was unsheltered on the night of January 22.'
On the night of January 22, staff and volunteers of Western Dairyland, Hope Gospel Mission, Family Promise of the Chippewa Valley, Catholic Charities, and Bolton Refuge House as well as other members of the community split into teams to roam different regions in search of homeless individuals to survey.
'It's exactly like it sounds,' Karls said. 'Some people are on the outskirts of the city, some people are driving around the rural areas, some people are walking downtown Eau Claire. We have paperwork and we have to approach people, strike up a conversation, ask them questions, and they fill out a survey. We had about 60 volunteers go out on the night of January 22.'
In addition to surveying the homeless they find, Karls said that they make sure to offer immediate services.
'If they want a ride to Sojourner House, we arrange for that,' he said. 'If they need supplies, we arrange that immediately, but in the end, what we need is to collect some demographic data, and then we go over the paperwork over the last week and make sure we haven't duplicated that paperwork.'
The following day, they had an event at a local church where they provided services and connections for those experiencing homelessness.
'Anyone who came to that, we could talk to them and survey if they were sheltered the previous night,' he said. 'We count them in our final numbers and then the same thing continues all week.'
During this time, they also go through the existing paperwork to ensure they haven't duplicated data.
'Then it is sent in to people at the state level to verify all the information,' he said. 'That's why there's a bit of a delay in getting the final numbers. The final numbers won't be available until late February.'
In July's Point-in-Time count, the number of homeless counted was 104, double the number of the January 2024 count.
Karls stressed that the numbers are just one data point Western Dairyland uses.
'This is just one data point,' he said. 'It gets a lot of attention, primarily due to all the volunteers who come in and help make a difference, but it's just one piece of data that we're looking at. When we look at real demographic trends, we're going to look at much more than just this one piece of data. It's a good effort, and it does give us some valuable data, but this number is never going to be 100 percent accurate. We know that it's just one piece of data that we can use to figure out how severe the issues are.'
