When the group of fluorescently dressed volunteers reached the edge of the biggest remaining encampment in Foggy Bottom, they paused. Juwan Rosa, a caseworker at Miriam’s Kitchen, distributed handfuls of Visa gift cards to all six surveyors before explaining how to approach a tent or sleeping person.
“The key thing, especially this late in the night, individuals might be sleeping or may be trying to hunker down, we don’t want to startle anyone, so always speaking in low quiet, soft tones, getting low to meet them at eye level,” he told the group. He reminded the volunteers to mention the gift cards when they approached someone, since encampment residents could receive one after answering questions.
Then the volunteers, equipped with the cards and Rosa’s advice, fanned out throughout the encampment to survey people experiencing homelessness for the annual Point-in-Time (PIT) Count.
Among the first people Rosa surveyed was a pair of women sitting in chairs at the edge of the encampment. Their caseworkers told them about the survey ahead of time and they were waiting up for it together — mostly to get the gift cards, they told Street Sense.
“It’s census taking in my book, which can be beneficial,” one of the women, who declined to share her name due to safety concerns while living outside, told Street Sense. “It’s good to have a factual number and to come out to the field and know what you’re dealing with.”
Conducted every January, the PIT Count is a federally-mandated survey of people experiencing homelessness. This year, D.C. and Montgomery County conducted the count on Jan. 29, while Virginia did it a week earlier, on Jan. 23. The results from the survey, which will be available later this spring, are then used by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to set funding levels for both state and local governments.
“It’s called the Point-in-Time Count because it’s supposed to give us a snapshot of what homelessness is at any given time here in America,” Andy Wassenich, director of policy at Miriam’s Kitchen, told Street Sense. “It gives us a baseline [for] knowing the severity of the problem, and just sort of lets us know that we can say that at least this many are experiencing homelessness.”
Christy Respress, president and CEO of Pathways to Housing, said this year over 300 volunteers at organizations across the city signed up to participate in the count, led by nonprofits like Pathways to Housing D.C., Miriam’s Kitchen, and The Community Partnership for the Prevention of Homelessness. Each group focused on an area of the city, with volunteers walking up and down every street in a few-block radius and speaking to each person they saw.
“The data collection analysis, all of this, is going into national numbers. We need this count to help the District and [wider] region bring more resources to the table to ensure that homelessness is rare, brief, and non-recurring,” Respress said in a speech to volunteers gathered downtown ahead of the count.
The latest PIT Count comes after two consecutive years where homelessness has been on the rise in the District: it rose by 14% between 2023 and 2024 and 11.6% the prior year. In the past year, the city budget funded only 619 housing vouchers, a fraction of the number advocates say are needed, over 2,000 families were forced out of a Rapid Rehousing subsidy rental program, and encampment closures doubled.
With encampment closures continuing to displace people to further and further reaches of the city, Miriam’s Kitchen had to create custom detailed maps for this year’s volunteers. These maps had dashes and xs marking the spots under bridges, tunnels, and overpasses where people have moved.
“For the folks who are evicted in encampments, the larger ones in particular, they’re still in encampments, just in smaller encampments,” Wassenich said. “They’re in more dangerous spots, and more inaccessible spots.”
Miriam’s Kitchen had its volunteers walk through its service area twice to make sure everyone is counted. This measure also extended the count, meaning many of Miriam’s volunteer teams finished after 1 a.m.
“While the official walk doesn’t start until about 9, we typically try and do a second roundthrough after about 11 p.m., because we find at 9 o’clock we may still have individuals walking around trying to keep warm rather than bunkering down for the night,” Rosa explained to Street Sense. “So, to make sure we can have an accurate count, we like to do a second walk-through.”
Despite these measures, the PIT Count is widely seen as an undercount of people experiencing homelessness. Advocacy groups, like SchoolHouse Connection, note it tends to undercount family homelessness because visible homelessness can lead to parents losing custody of their children. It might also miss people who qualify as chronically homeless but find somewhere to stay one or two nights a week, or those who are just good at hiding, Wassenich noted.
The PIT also only counts how many people are without a home on a single night. Local numbers suggest the total number of people who experience homelessness across a year is much higher.
In fiscal year 2024, D.C. served 8,768 individuals and 1,431 families experiencing homelessness, a far higher number than the 3,960 individuals and 539 families counted in the January 2024 PIT Count, according to data presented at a December D.C. Interagency on Homelessness meeting. The average length of time people experienced homelessness increased in 2024, to 229 days for individuals and 130 days for families.
While nearly 1,200 of the families served reported finding housing in fiscal year 2024, only 750 individuals did. This is the lowest number of individuals experiencing homelessness who have exited to permanent housing since fiscal year 2016.
The data from the 2025 PIT Count will be available this spring through the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments, which releases an annual report compiling the data from D.C. and the surrounding area.
But on the cold January night, volunteers fanned out across D.C. for the count. Across the city from Rosa’s group in Foggy Bottom, near Chinatown, outreach workers with Pathways to Housing talked to Elvis. He knew the count was that night and made his way to Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library, carrying his backpack and suitcase, just as a group of volunteers arrived.
Elvis lingered under the library’s awning until a volunteer was available to survey him, and later spoke with Street Sense about the resources he’d like D.C. to invest in for people experiencing homelessness. The PIT Count, which asks participants to answer questions about their identity, experiences with homelessness, and experiences using government-allocated resources, aims to collect data that can help officials provide what people need.
Elvis wanted D.C. officials to add charging ports around the city, specifically on benches. He said most people experiencing homelessness who have a phone also have a charging cord, but struggle to keep in contact with loved ones because they can’t always find a reliable place to charge their devices.
“If you’ve got a phone, you can stay in touch with your children, witha caseworker,” Elvis said.
He also shared his thoughts on the options available for shelter.
“Stop warehousing people,” Elvis said, referring to traditional congregate shelters where people might sleep between six and 24 in a room. “I think it’s better, personally, if we do things that look more like hotel rooms, where you have the basics.”
An important function of PIT Count is its ability to give service providers insight into the barriers that exist when it comes to accessing shelter, according to Wassenich. D.C. is currently in hypothermia season, a period when the city opens additional shelters to protect people from the cold. Wassenich worries about what an excess of unfilled beds could mean for the quality of shelter, as the city often reports it has 100 beds for men unoccupied, despite the frigid weather.
“It’ll be interesting to see though if our unsheltered numbers are going up,” Wassenich said. “But people aren’t taking advantage of [shelter] or refusing it outright — so what does that say about the facilities that we’re offering?”
A woman sitting under the MLK library awning, who didn’t want to share her name with Street Sense due to privacy concerns, said she often avoids shelters because she doesn’t want to give up her personal belongings that aren’t permitted inside the shelter.
“We can’t bring blankets and towels and stuff inside because I think bed bugs is an issue, but then you don’t have dirty ones, and they don’t always have new ones to issue,” she told Street Sense.
She said while she understands items like blankets and towels can carry lice and nail clippers can be used as weapons, the thought of having to throw away her belongings without knowing when she’ll get new ones is daunting.
She suggested D.C. create “tiered” requirements for people experiencing homelessness who are entering shelters. People without a history of mental health issues or misusing resources could then retain more of their belongings.
Mr. G, who chose to give his initial to protect his privacy while living outside, also expressed frustration with shelters, noting they “seem like jail.” He lives in an encampment in Foggy Bottom, Whitehurst Hill, which is facing closure in mid-March, and expressed to Street Sense his frustration at the possibility of having to move his stuff in the current temperatures.
Mr. G had never taken the PIT Count survey before, and thought the experience was fine, but wished more people understood how difficult living outside can be.
“You feel like you’re an outcast,” he said. “Dealing with trash and the environment and things you have no control over is really exhausting.”
Even though she lives across the city from Mr. G., the woman staying under the MLK library awning expressed similar frustration at how little control she has over certain things and at how well-meaning people often misunderstand what she needs.
For example, she said the bulk of “diverse products” she receives, like toiletries, meals, and clothes, come from churches and nonprofit organizations, not groups that are associated with the government or receive federal funding. People also often come by with toiletry bags, which, while needed, can result in her having an excess of certain products.
“I don’t know how many bars of soap people think I need, but there are things that I just get repeats of,” she said. “I don’t need 10 toothbrushes, but I always say thank you because I can’t seem ungrateful.”
She said she’d like to see people hand out more Benadryl, ibuprofen, and cold medicine – only receiving a few at a time doesn’t get her far when she’s sick.
“You get a two-pack of cold medicine, and it’s like if I have a cold, I’m gonna need more than two pills,” she said.
In addition to asking about people’s needs, the survey aims to understand the circumstances that might cause homelessness. For example, it might ask participants if they experienced homelessness as a result of fleeing domestic violence or aging out of foster care.
In the process, it asks about difficult topics, including substance abuse, childhood abuse, and trauma — questions one of the women Rosa surveyed did not feel comfortable answering.
“It does touch upon things like sexual abuse, sexual assault, domestic violence [and] foster care. I can see why we want those included. Usually the follow-up question, if anyone says yes to one of these, is: ‘Is your experience of homelessness a direct result of the aforementioned thing?’” Rosa said.
While Rosa said the questions are important, he acknowledged PIT Count volunteers are practically strangers to most survey takers. Survey interactions are quite quick, usually between 10 and 15 minutes, meaning if a topic triggers someone or makes them emotional, there isn’t usually time to fully process these feelings.
“We’re asking these questions, we’re bringing up these emotions, but we don’t have the follow-up,” Rosa said. “We’re bringing up some traumatic stuff and then, ‘okay, thank you’ and then we’re gone.”
On 26th Street in Foggy Bottom, it was near midnight when volunteers began to reach the end of their second pass. But before they could turn back to Miriam’s Kitchen, they met Wendell.
He was sitting in the awning of an apartment building, preparing to go to sleep. A pair of volunteers sat with him as he answered the questions one by one, and afterward agreed to tell Street Sense about it.
Having been surveyed once before, four years ago, Wendell told Street Sense he felt “comfortable” answering all the questions.
“Well, you’ve got to understand the situation,” he said. “I filled out the survey because I thought it was meaningful.”
