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The Tucson Pima Collaboration to End Homelessness called its point-in-time count, conducted Jan. 29, a “snapshot of households experiencing homelessness on a single night.� Results from the count were released last week.

The effort, which involved over 400 volunteers, “identified 2,818 people in 1,857 households residing in shelter, transitional housing, or living without shelter� that night, according to a news release. This year’s count included Catalina and Ajo for the first time, TPCH said.

TCPH is a coalition of Tucson area organizations committed to the mission of ending homelessness in Tucson and Pima County. PIT counts are required by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, the group said.

January’s one-day count was about 5.5% higher than the 2024 count, which tallied 2,102 people.

But that figure is likely an undercount. The PIT counts should not “suggest or state that this is a fully accurate count,� but rather it is “a one-time, as we call it, snapshot of (Jan. 29),� said Ernesto Portillo, a spokesman for Tucson’s housing and community development department.

In March, HCD Director Ann Chanecka told the Star that the city owns about 2,000 housing units, operates 90 shelter beds and was “supporting� 583 emergency shelter beds. At that time, she said the city also administers 5,500 vouchers through its , which essentially acts as rental assistance.

About 30,000 people in total were on the waitlists for all those services, Chanecka said in March.

On Thursday, Portillo said that figure is still accurate. The lion’s share of those 30,000 people are on waitlists for housing vouchers, he said.

Of the 2,818 homeless people counted in January, 1,276 were unsheltered homeless people, about 45% of all those contacted, while 942 were in a sheltered setting on the night of the count.

Of those counted, more than 63% were males and nearly half were white, according to data summarized by TPCH.

The count showed 1,902 people were at least 25 years old, while 204 were under the age of 18. That’s up from the 2024 count of 175 homeless minors.

It also showed 842, nearly 38%, of the 2,218 people counted in January were chronically homeless, which is defined as “people who have experienced homelessness for at least a year — or repeatedly — while struggling with a disabling conditions such as a serious mental illness, substance use disorder, or physical disability,� TPCH said in its report, citing the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Overall, the number of unsheltered homeless people remained about the same when compared to last year’s point-in-time count, but the number of sheltered people increased by over 120.

“Having anyone living on the streets is devastating. The high demand for homeless shelter and services pose a community-wide challenge,� said TPCH chairperson Shannon Fowler. “TPCH and its partners are focused on alleviating this crisis through coordinated efforts to bring respite to our unsheltered neighbors and creating solutions to provide stable housing.�

The county’s homeless population drastically increased post-COVID, TCPH’s data shows.

The 2020 count produced a total of 1,324 people experiencing sheltered-or-unsheltered homelessness; two years later, in 2022, the count jumped to 2,227.

That two-year period also saw an explosion of the unsheltered homeless figures, and conversely, a decrease in sheltered homeless people. From 2020 to 2022, unsheltered numbers rose by nearly 1,000, while unsheltered numbers dropped from 745 to 578.

Since the 2020-22 increase, the total number of homeless individuals counted has largely remained stable: the number of unsheltered individuals has gone down, from 1,649 in 2022 to 1,276 counted in January, while the number of sheltered individuals increased, from 578 in 2022 to 942 counted in January.