At 4 a.m. on Tuesday, 25 two-person teams will scour Denver, counting people living outside.
The teams of city workers, deployed by the Department of Housing Stability, will comb through the city center, and also farther out toward Denver's edge. They'll look in obvious encampments but also more remote locations.
They can't find everybody sleeping outside, but they can do their best. The number they arrive at with will be used by Mayor Mike Johnston to set policy, as he has done with last year's Point in Time count. He used that data to decide how many people to try to shelter over two years. The number will also give service providers a sense of how many more people are living on the streets than last year.
The workers doing the count will be participating in the nationwide Point in Time Count, the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development's attempt to figure out roughly -- very roughly -- how many people are experiencing homelessness on a single night in January.
It's an imprecise exercise in tallying homelessness. Not all regions handle the count the same way, though all follow the same set of HUD rules.
Even the seven counties under the Metro Denver Homeless Initiative, the group overseeing the local count, have different approaches to counting. Some use volunteers. Others, like Denver, use paid staff.
Who gets counted as homeless, sheltered and unsheltered is specific.
Certain situations, considered homeless by the U.S. Department of Education, go uncounted in HUD's Point in Time data: People staying with family and friends or doubled up and couch surfing.
People living in shelters and hotels and motels paid for by homeless service providers will be counted as people experiencing homelessness while living in "emergency shelter," explained Kyla Moe, deputy director of the Metro Denver Homeless Initiative.
People living in unsanctioned encampments will be counted as "unsheltered."
"People staying in Safe Outdoor Spaces are considered unsheltered by HUD and will therefore be reported as part of Denver's unsheltered numbers," explained Derek Woodbury, a spokesperson for the Department of Housing Stability. "There are currently three Safe Outdoor Spaces in Denver located at 1530 W. 13th Ave., 4635 N. Peoria St., and 3815 Steele St."
But those living in tiny homes on government or nonprofit-run campuses will likely be considered "sheltered," though people living independently in tiny homes or sheds without restrooms or kitchens are considered "unsheltered."
City workers will hand count people living in encampments. The shelters will provide data for how many people spent the night to the Homeless Management Information System, the regional year-round database tracking homelessness services.
In the week after the count, at least 10% of the people identified will be surveyed about their identity and lives.
Last year saw a dramatic rise in homelessness in the metro area.
According to the 2023 Point in Time count, 9,065 experienced homelessness on a single night last January. And that's just a fraction of the more than 30,000 people who accessed homeless services throughout the year, according to the Metro Denver Homeless Initiative's recently released 2023 State of Homelessness report.
After six months of Mayor Johnston's administration's effort to shelter 1,000 people, Denverites will look at the new number and ask: Is Johnston's House1000 push making a dent in unsheltered homelessness?
Cole Chandler, Johnston's senior advisor on homelessness, told Denverite he's optimistic the number of people living outside has dropped. But the Metro Denver Homeless Initiative won't publish the data in the summer, so he can't be sure.
Two factors, outside of Johnston's control, will influence the number of people living outside.
Tens of thousands of migrants have arrived in Denver from the Texas-Mexico border, and some of them are living on the streets or in city-run shelters, likely boosting the Point in Time number of both sheltered and unsheltered individuals.
"We do not ask for migrant status in HMIS nor on the PIT survey, so someone who is a migrant who presented at a sheltered location or as unsheltered would be counted in the data," Moe said.
The outreach teams across the metro are prepared to survey people who don't speak English.
"Our community has recruited volunteers and staff that speak Spanish and we have the tools translated into Spanish," Moe said.
The Point in Time number of unsheltered people could be much lower than it might be if the count took place in a few weeks, after the city resumes its policy of kicking migrant families out of shelters once their alloted days end -- a decision the Johnston administration announced just days before the Point in Time count.
While city officials say they are trying to find housing for every migrant before they're forced from shelter to the streets, the policy shift could lead to a massive increase in the number of people sleeping outside -- something this year's Point of Time numbers will not capture.
Chandler says the timing of removing migrants from shelters has been a topic of debate and weather has been a main factor in conversations -- not so much the Point in Time count.
He also acknowledged that the administration did not conceive of how the increase in migration and homelessness would converge.
"This issue has so rapidly evolved over the course of six months, it's kind of frightening," Chandler said. "And it's going to have to be something we continue to grapple with in a really serious way. And we're really hoping to get some federal support and some coordination at the federal level."
