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Results From City’s Annual Homeless Count Are In: Growth Rate of Street Homelessness Down; Number of Homeless Adults Living on the Street Up

The Office of Homeless Services (OHS) today released the results of Philadelphia’s 2018 annual overnight count of adults experiencing homelessness and living on the street. Results from the count, conducted in January, show that the rapid rate of growth of street homelessness in Philadelphia has slowed to 10% after spiking to 32% the year before – and that the total number of unsheltered individuals has increased from 930 to 1,020 primarily as a result of the opioid epidemic.

“We are moving in the right direction,” said OHS Director Liz Hersh. “We have slowed the train down. It shows that what we are doing is working – we just need to keep it up and expand. The Mayor has proposed additional support for housing first strategies so we anticipate additional progress over the coming year.”

Hersh said the city’s ability to disrupt and significantly reduce the street homelessness growth rate is due largely to its implementation of homeless intervention programs that take a housing first approach. Combatting homelessness with this strategy allows OHS to focus first on getting people housed, without preconditions, and then on working collaboratively to connect them to vital social services, substance use disorder treatment, mental health care, medical needs and other supports to address the underlying issues often leading to or exacerbating homelessness.

Indeed, housing first is paying off for Philadelphia. A low-barrier homeless respite center OHS opened last year in Kensington at Prevention Point Philadelphia, for example, has helped 160 people – 40% of whom entered housing and/or addiction treatment, a notable success rate in the city’s most opioid-distressed community.

“The success of this low-barrier respite shows us that when we meet people where they are and provide them with what they need, they respond,” said Hersh. “We are finding that making it easy for people to just come in, get regular meals, sleep and care in a safe environment enables and encourages them to start working on the other issues in their lives. We all need housing first.”

OHS also expanded the Pathways to Housing PA fidelity “housing first” model from 60-75 units, which has so far achieved a remarkable 100% retention rate with 51 percent of participants entering drug treatment or otherwise abstaining from drug use. And over a record 18-month period, OHS’s 100-day Chronic Homelessness Team successfully housed 440 people who had been chronically homeless in Philadelphia.

The results from this year’s count also show that the opioid crisis, which claimed an estimated 1,200 lives in Philadelphia last year, continues to drive street homelessness in the city. Kensington and Center City continue to have the largest concentrations of people living on the street although street homelessness is down in both areas by seven percent and 14 percent respectively while the number of homeless people counted at SEPTA’s underground concourse in Center City is down by 24 this year.

The largest increase in street homelessness was found at 30th Street station where there were an additional 92 people counted. OHS attributes this increase to the nightly closing of the 69th Street Terminal, which causes people to relocate to the closest transportation center. The Airport also saw an increase of 15 people over last year. Additionally, 20 more people were counted as being street homeless in the Northern Liberties/Fishtown section of Philadelphia, OHS officials said, because of the construction along I-95.

The purpose of the annual homeless count is to estimate and track the size of the homeless population in Philadelphia, identify trends and vulnerable groups and gain greater insight into homelessness. Results inform local and federal policy and the allocation of resources to combat homelessness from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Philadelphia’s adult count is coordinated and executed by the Office of Homeless Services, the Department of Behavioral Health and Intellectual disAbility Services, Project HOME and the Veterans Administration Medical Center. It is conducted by about 400 trained volunteers who span out across the city canvassing areas in every zip code, taking a digital count of people experiencing homelessness and surveying those who will talk. This year, the City invested in people with lived experience helping with the count.

A separate youth-specific count is coordinated and executed by the Office of Homeless Service and Valley Youth House. The results of the youth-specific count from 2017 and 2018 will be released at a later date. With the adoption of the Voices of Youth Count methodology, which includes youth with lived experience conducting surveys, Philadelphia is becoming increasingly aware of this largely hidden population and their individualized needs and therefore tracks them separately.

Philadelphia Awarded $33 Million to Fund New and Existing Housing Programs for the Homeless

PHILADELPHIA – Philadelphia’s Office of Homeless Services has been awarded $33 million in highly competitive federal grant money to fund both new and existing programs to house the city’s homeless.

The money from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) will fund the continuing operation of each of the 99 homeless assistance programs the City sought federal dollars from HUD to renew. These programs provide more than 2,700 units of transitional and permanent housing coupled with vital supportive services and have proven effective in meeting the needs of people experiencing homelessness in Philadelphia.

To further the city’s efforts to house the homeless, the HUD award will also fund six new Philadelphia homeless intervention programs each with a housing-first approach and each targeting a different vulnerable population identified by the Office of Homeless Services as being in critical need of support.

“We are thrilled because this substantial allocation of funding enables us to not only continue what’s working but to expand on it,” said Philadelphia’s Homeless Services Director Liz Hersh. “To have all 99 of our renewal projects funded andbe able to implement new homeless strategies and interventions for Philadelphia is incredible.”

The city’s new homeless intervention programs slated for funding will provide housing support to the following target populations beginning this calendar year: households fleeing domestic violence; young adults ages 18-24; households with children; households without children; homeless people brought into the system through mobile assessors; and chronically homeless households where the head of household has a disability.

Philadelphia’s renewal projects will continue providing housing assistance to a wide range of homeless populations with varying and complex needs from individuals struggling with an addiction or mental illness to families with children where the head of household is living with HIV/AIDS to formerly homeless families in need of rapid re-housing to individuals who have a long and troubling history of living on the street.

Philadelphia successfully transitioned more than 300 chronically homeless people into permanent supportive housing last year and also released the city’s most comprehensive report on youth homelessness to date.

And just last week the Office of Homeless Services concluded its successful effort to keep the homeless safe and warm – saving lives and helping hundreds – during an intense 15-day stretch of extreme cold exacerbated by snow and icy conditions accounting for the city’s longest-running Cod Blue period in modern history.

“We’re having a real impact on homelessness in Philadelphia and we’re putting forth every effort to make homelessness as rare, brief and nonrecurring as possible,” Hersh said.