Last week, Milwaukee kicked off its annual Point-In-Time Count, a survey that estimates the number of people who are unhoused in the area.
The Point-In-Time Count is a requirement from the federal government, and is used to estimate changes in homelessness over time. First conducted in 2005, the count is completed at the end of January throughout the nation.
The count has been critiqued for likely undercounting the unhoused population nationwide. But the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, or HUD, often cites the count for reports to Congress on homelessness, and requires jurisdictions who receive federal grant funding to conduct the count.
Eric Collins-Dyke is Milwaukee County's assistant administrator of supportive housing and homeless services. He says Milwaukee County’s outreach team is already doing street outreach five days per week. While the Point-In-Time Count might have larger financial and statistical implications, for outreach workers it feels similar to any day’s work.
“We’re out here to gather information and data, but we’re also trying to convince people to come inside,” Collins-Dyke says.
How does the count work?
At 10 p.m. on Wednesday, Jan. 28, around 20 outreach workers gathered to go over the night’s plan. They divided Milwaukee County into five sections, and split up so that multiple cars would cover each section. This year, this was happening in single-digit temperatures.
Each car got a list of locations to visit. These locations are chosen based on daily outreach done by these same workers, and were places they expected to see unhoused people. Sometimes these spots were visible from the street, sometimes they involved following footsteps in the snow.
“Many of the folks that we’ll see tonight we already know and our team is already working with,” said Collins-Dyke. “So a lot of it is just following up on where they’re at in the process of getting housing.”
Many of the spots Collins-Dyke’s car visited were unoccupied, but not all. When they come across someone, conversations followed a similar pattern: Introduce yourself and what you’re doing, offer shelter, ask questions from the official Point-In-Time survey, offer shelter again, and end with offering a sandwich.
Some take Collins-Dyke up on his offer to take them to a shelter for the night. One person staying outside agreed to find a shelter for the night, but only at a particular shelter where they had good prior experiences. Minutes later, Collins-Dyke was driving across town to this person’s desired shelter.
Maria Serrano Veloz, a community intervention specialist for Milwaukee County, was partnered with Collins-Dyke for the count. Between free-flowing conversation about faith, journalism, and family heritage, she conducted the official survey informally in the car’s backseat.
“You’re trying to keep the conversation going, and show that we understand and care about everything they have to say at this moment,” Serrano Veloz said. “So we can then do all those follow-ups and be that link to any additional services they need.”
Following the official kick-off of the count on Jan. 28, Milwaukee County continues looking for people for seven days by revisiting locations and looking for people they’ve previously made contact with but were unable to locate on the first night. The figures from the street count are combined with data from local shelters to finalize the count.
Once these figures are ready, they are sent to HUD. In Milwaukee, Point-In-Time data will be added to an existing trove to help track outcomes.
The bigger picture, and Point-In-Time’s limitations
Point-In-Time is not the only data we have to measure homelessness. While the count is often cited in public data regarding homelessness, those working in this sector have more than one measurement tool available.
Nancy Esteves, homeless management information system manager at the Institute for Community Alliances, says Point-In-Time should not be considered the end-all-be-all of data on homelessness. She says Milwaukee’s system relies on data collected through the Homeless Management Intervention System, or HMIS. This collects individualized data that includes demographic information, housing history, health information and services previously accessed.
“Point-In-Time is the snapshot, HMIS is the movie,” Esteves says. “When we talk about homelessness, data should always come with context, and numbers should always come with humanity.”
Point-In-Time is also likely an undercount, both in rural areas, and with certain populations of people in precarious living situations. HUD’s definition of “homeless” also limits the count’s ability to reflect reality.
Tim Baack is the president and CEO of Pathfinders, an organization that works with young people experiencing homelessness. He notes that young people are often missed in the Point-In-Time count, due to definitional issues.
“HUD is very specific under their department guidelines that only people who are in emergency homeless shelter, or living on the street or a place not meant for human habitation are allowed to be included in the survey count,” Baack says.
Baack says that other federal agencies, like the U.S. Department of Education, have definitions for homelessness that include more precarious living situations. For Baack, these are definitions that better reflect reality.
“We see many young people doubled or tripled-up, living in unsafe but not definitionally uninhabitable conditions, but still have great housing instability,” Baack says.
Beyond getting a more accurate count, getting the definition right can mean more resources for services.
“It’s an indicator, but it’s not an absolute,” Baack says. “It’s not just about who’s included in the count and who’s left out, but also the resources that come to communities and who is eligible to access those resources.”
Milwaukee’s past success, and concerns about future federal funding
One of Point-In-Time’s purported strengths is that it can provide a snapshot to compare to previous years. While it may not capture the full extent of homelessness, it can give an idea of aggregate changes over time.
Over the past decade, Point-In-Time data indicates that Milwaukee has been uniquely successful at preventing homelessness compared to other cities nationwide.
Krystina Kohler, impact manager for the Safe and Stable Homes Initiative at United Way of Greater Milwaukee and Waukesha County, attributes this to Milwaukee’s commitment to a “Housing First” approach. The approach focuses on securing housing for those who want it, and then following up with other services. The opposite approach conditions housing on, for example, employment or substance abuse counseling.
“It’s meeting a person’s basic needs before moving onto other elements of their life,” Kohler says. “So ‘Housing First’ is not ‘housing only,’ it’s housing plus supportive services.”
But in fall 2025, HUD instituted new requirements for jurisdictions like Milwaukee seeking federal funding for homeless services. The requirements include provisions that limit the amount of federal money that can be used for supportive housing, which is how Milwaukee funds much of the housing it uses to implement its Housing First approach.
Court challenges delayed these changes for now, and they will likely not take effect until the next grant cycle begins later this year. Kohler says these changes caused a funding lapse for some service providers, and that's even before they know exactly what changes may come in the future.
“Even if this funding gets renewed, there’s going to be about six months where our local service providers won’t have money and will rely on private lines of credit to pay their staff,” Kohler says.
In the meantime, outreach workers like Collins-Dyke will continue doing what they do best: offering a sandwich, shelter, and respect.
“We’re entering their home, wherever that is. Honoring that, respecting them, listening, and collaborating on possible solutions is the core of what we do,” he says.
