Valley officials, volunteers count homeless people on wet, dreary day

Rain relentlessly pounded Phoenix the night before the Maricopa Association of Governments’ annual homelessness count. By the time the count started at 6 a.m. on Tuesday, the streets were soaked and muddy.

Still, workers and volunteers trudged on in the dampened morning with the intention of counting the number of unsheltered people in metro Phoenix. Officials called the effort a “Point-in-Time” count and said it’s an important data for federal homelessness assistance funding.

“While the Point-in-Time count is only a small snapshot of the homelessness crisis, we know that gathering data is an important way to drive progress,” said Phoenix Mayor Kate Gallego, who is chair of MAG.

Finding new shelter

The count was the first one since Phoenix officials spent months clearing out the Zone, one of the nation's largest homeless encampments. The final homemade shelter was removed from the Zone in November.

Phoenix's Office of Homeless Solutions said in a Dec. 12 press release that 718 people were removed from the Zone. Of those people, 590 accepted shelter offered by city officials. The city said nearly a third of them had left their respective shelters without securing permanent housing.

On Tuesday, Brian Gruters, regional homelessness program manager for MAG, made the rounds on streets east of 19th Avenue and north of Van Buren Street with other MAG employees. The area they canvassed is just north of the Zone.

Gruters’ team found approximately 50 unsheltered people in the area, mostly beneath some kind of makeshift covering. He said about half were willing to engage with counters, answering questions about the amount of time they had been unsheltered and whether they had conditions that kept them out of shelter or housing.

The structures they made for themselves varied in sturdiness and size. One person had erected a tent near an Interstate 10 overpass; it was noticeably large and isolated from foot traffic. Others lived in empty dirt lots, with water inundating their belongings and puddles forming around their tents, Gruters said.

‘This is fucking crazy’

While many of the people Gruters encountered were either exhausted from the overnight rain, sleeping or not willing to engage with the folks conducting the count, Michael Whitmer was spry and unreserved. He asked Gruters specific questions about housing programs and appeared knowledgeable about the often difficult-to-navigate system.

Whitmer told Phoenix New Times he had been homeless for two years. Previous conflicts at shelters led to him being pushed out of the facilities, he said.

His difficulties obtaining housing echoed the experiences of Owen Blakley, who spoke with New Times about his own situation with homelessness. Ultimately, Blakley was able to get housing through the rapid rehousing program and with the help of Community Bridges Inc.

“CBI does amazing things. CBI is the reason I was able to get into my apartment. They helped me,” Blakley said. “But they’re so overworked at that shelter, they had maybe 10 minutes when they’re not dealing with a crisis. That’s not gonna help you.”

Blakley was living with a partner, but when the relationship came to an end, he left and went to the Central Arizona Shelter Services in August 2019, he said.

What was supposed to be a short stay became three and a half years of living in shelters and tenuous housing.

“I was terrified when I first stepped in (CASS). I was like, ‘This is fucking crazy. The people look violent here.’ I was real quiet at first, I was … just don’t notice me, I’m not here,” Blakley said. “And then stuff started disappearing, people started pressing me, I got in a couple fights. And all of a sudden, I wasn’t nice anymore. I wasn’t quiet. I started getting in peoples’ faces the second they disrespected me. Like it was a prison. I’ve never been to prison, I’ve never been arrested. But they put me in that mentality of fight or die.”

Blakley's experiences have left him with enduring trauma. He expects the worst in most situations and said the psychological toll weighs heavily on him.

“I don’t sleep well; I’m wary of people. If I see someone with their hands in their pocket, I’m watching their hands because I don’t know what they’re gonna do,” Blakley said. “I’ve seen people go from cool to flying off the handle in a second down at that shelter.”

A critical data point

Data collected during the homeless count will be used by the Maricopa Regional Continuum of Care program to apply for homelessness assistance programs through the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

The Continuum of Care has received more than $550 million in funding since 1999, according to MAG. The program currently supports more than 32 homeless assistance programs within 11 different agencies.

Both MAG and Phoenix officials noted the data also is important for making decisions in how to address the crisis.

“From our new Safe Outdoor Space to investing in behavioral health team engagements at our parks and intersections, I’m hoping today’s interactions can better inform future policy and help us make data-driven decisions to address our homelessness crisis,” Phoenix Vice Mayor Yassamin Ansari said in a press release.

Data from the count will be released publicly in April, according to the association.

“We’re doing everything we can to crunch the numbers timely so that they’re fully calculated and vetted by April,” Gruters said.

Last year, MAG and its volunteers counted 9,642 people experiencing homelessness in the region, a 7% increase from 2022. About half of those people were living unsheltered, while the other half were in shelters.