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Talking Politics TV show is streaming reruns of their coverage of the 2007 Point in Time count in Hudson county. Rerun - If you missed it, watch our show on last year’s January Homeless Count Day. Meet some of the folks involved with helping the homeless whether through the County or private shelters. Come with us as Bob DuVal, TP’s cameraman, Tom Harrigan from PERC, a private emergency shelter, and I meet some of the homeless who live under the viaduct in Union City. Hear their stories. Get the insights on one of three private emergency shelters in HC as I talk to the Director of PERC in Union City. Many of those living in these shelters are the working poor, the minimum wage earners.

To watch the show click here.

January 29, 2008 brought Project Homeless Connect Events to counties across the state. In conjunction with this service model, Point-in-Time Surveys were conducted to count the homeless population in New Jeresy. The Trenton Times reported on the Point-In-Time efforts in Mercer County.

Counting the homeless

Wednesday, January 30, 2008
BY LISA CORYELL

TRENTON — You won’t find Jeffrey Bakos waiting in line for a bed at any city shelter. You won’t find him enjoying a hot meal at the Trenton Area Soup Kitchen. You won’t find him applying for welfare benefits downtown.

No, to find the fiercely independent Bakos you have to go to where he lives — in a makeshift shanty covered by a blue plastic tarp deep in the woods off Lalor Street.
And that’s just where volunteers located him yesterday morning during the city’s annual Point in Time count, a daylong tabulation of the area’s homeless population.

Armed with a federal survey, volunteers queried Bakos on everything from his vital statistics to his personal history and medical needs.

…

To read the full article click here

Middlesex County saw a large turn out at their Project Homeless Connect event sites on January 29. People attending the events received services, goodie bags and meals throughout the day. The Home News Tribune highlighted the importance of the Point in Time Count and the differences from previous years.

MIDDLESEX COUNTY — After the first wave of people were fed Tuesday at Elijah’s Promise in New Brunswick, the soup kitchen’s Executive Director Lisanne Finston had recorded 128 homeless in the lunch crowd alone. That’s not counting the 50 or 60 homeless persons she estimated were fed across town at the Ebenezer Baptist Church.

A second wave of homeless would arrive several hours later for dinner.

The count was part of Middlesex County’s annual Point in Time Survey which is required by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, or HUD, for municipalities applying for funds for homeless housing. The count serves as a kind of snapshot of the number of homeless people living in the county at a given moment in time.

Tuesday, the count was up.

To read the full article click here

Register now to learn about the 2008 PITC Survey Instrument and the Online Survey! Click here for the registration form.

Who Should Attend:

Continuum of Care Organizers
Point in Time Count Organizers
Anyone who will be training staff or volunteers to administer the survey or upload data

Sign up for one of four regional trainings:

Friday, November 30 
Essex County Environment Center, Roseland
11 - 1 PM

Friday, December 7
NJ Housing & Mortgage Finance Agency, Trenton
10 to 12 PM

Friday, December 14
Jewish Family Service of Atlantic County, Margate City
10 to 12 PM

Monday, December 17
CPAC, Pennsauken 10 to 12 PM

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The Corporation for Supportive Housing has released the data from the January 25, 2007 point in time count. A Summary of the statewide findings and Full Report with county-level data are available on their web site. To view the full report click here. To view data on all counties click here. To view data by county use the links at the bottom of this post. 

The report finds that on the day of the point in time count there were seventeen thousand thirty six (17,036) homeless persons in New Jersey, including four thousand six hundred thirty nine (4,639) children. The count surveyed sheltered (10,510) and unsheltered (1,887) homeless adults and also requested information regarding any children in the household. Families represented 20% of the population.

Among demographic trends in the survey responses are the findings that:

Homelessness is present in every county and that there are trends of both urban and rural homelessness, although rural homelessness is harder to count due to poorer service networks.

50% of adults were male, 41% female, 1% transgender, and 10% unknown

Nearly 80% were white, about 15% Black, and the remaining adults reported as Asian or other (no separate Hispanic category)

30% were living in shelters, 18% in hotels/motels, 23% in transitional housing, 15% on the streets, and 14% did not indicate.

Atlantic

Bergen

Burlington

Camden

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