News Track: Winter homeless counts show mixed results in Linn, Johnson counties

CEDAR RAPIDS — In January 2023, as temperatures plummeted to bitter lows around Linn County, volunteers in Cedar Rapids discovered a new high in their count of those living outdoors in the winter.

That count followed a record high for summer “Point in Time” counts in July 2022, when the number of homeless people living outdoors in Linn County went into triple digits for the first time.

The count, conducted by Willis Dady Homeless Services and Waypoint volunteers in Linn County, and Shelter House volunteers in Johnson County, helps calculate the size of the local homeless population, including the number of people sleeping in places not meant for habitation.

While Linn County continued to hit new successive records with the biannual census, counts in Johnson remained relatively stable.

What has happened since?

This year’s winter count on Jan. 24 yielded mixed results in Linn and Johnson counties that showed perhaps the start of changing trends for both.

Linn County volunteers from Willis Dady and Waypoint found 20 unsheltered people living outdoors that night — a decrease from 29 last winter.

“It did surprise me,” said J’nae Peterman, director of housing services for Waypoint and organizer for the biannual census in Linn County. “While there is a trend in the rise of literal homelessness, when we look at the macro-level numbers in the community, we are beginning to see our numbers decrease.”

She credits the start of what she’s hoping is a reversing trend to devoting more resources in diversion programs that help people before they enter the cycle of homelessness. The number served by Waypoint’s diversion programs, which help people with housing maintain it, has more than tripled.

“For so long, we have been so reactionary when it comes to homeless services,” Peterman said. “We as a community have said we need to get ahead of the problem, to step in before that happens.”

Aside from the decrease, most of the trends from previous years have remained. Most respondents in the census, typically concentrated in Cedar Rapids, are single men living in increasingly spread-out places around the city — away from its downtown core of homeless resources.

Many of those found are sleeping in their vehicles — a trend noted last year — and tend to be chronically homeless for months or years.

“It’s not so centralized anymore, which makes it difficult to find people when you’re out there,” said Peterman.

On the night of this year’s count, Cedar Rapids saw an increase in people using beds at the overflow winter shelter, too — up to 84 from last year’s 66. But often, those who stay in the shelter will stay only a night or two before departing.

Conversely, Johnson County saw a marked increase in the count of those sleeping outdoors for the first time in several years. After several years of a relatively stable winter count, Shelter House volunteers found 23 people living outdoors — an increase from 13 last year.

The increase comes as a “pretty stark” development to Shelter House staff, but no surprise after markers indicated an increasing trend in housing insecurity.

“It’s one thing to be expecting an increase, it’s another thing to see it in black and white when you jot it on paper,” said Christine Hayes, development director of Shelter House.

In addition to a growing waitlist for emergency shelter, Hayes said staff have seen a growing increase in struggles among those experiencing homelessness in any capacity — not just those living outdoors.

Johnson County’s winter shelter was full on the very first day it opened in December — a departure from past seasons when full capacity would come only as bitter temperatures arrived later. Another proxy: a large number of those who are unsheltered but have access to a housing voucher cannot find a landlord willing to rent to them.

“To be full on Night One spoke to the volume of people outside,” she said. “We’ve been full every night.”

Hayes theorizes that the building of 60 permanent supportive housing units early on — 24 units opened in January 2019 and 36 opened in June 2023 — helped Johnson County get ahead of the curve, which translated to lower counts.

“It allowed us to achieve some level of stability in the region, but we can only build so fast, and we only have so much money,” Hayes said. “Putting the problem of solving homelessness on a single nonprofit would be quite the burden. We continue to push to solve it, but the reality is we can only build so fast.”

Like in Linn County, she said it appears that much of the population living without outdoors is chronically homeless.

While local and municipal providers have been generous with their funding, she said a lack of affording housing for those earning much less than the median income, plus a lack of state resources, are hindering progress.

“It says that we have a real crisis of housing affordability, we have a real crisis of the ability of institutions that have historically been providing care,” Hayes said. “We are fortunate that our community really ponies up. … But you can’t expect local municipalities to cover everything.

“It seems like every time there’s a positive step forward, there’s a new step backward. It’s so easy for a funding source to disappear.”

Comments: Features reporter Elijah Decious can be reached at (319) 398-8340 or elijah.decious@thegazette.com.