“Homeless outreach, anybody home?," Zach Brown calls out at an encampment in Akron's Summit Lake neighborhood.
He's the Supportive Services for Veteran Families healthcare navigator and outreach worker with Community Support Services, a behavioral health service provider for those experiencing homelessness or with persistent mental illness. He and fellow outreach worker Rickie Asberry are part of a team of advocates checking in on encampments around Summit County, but this one is empty.
“Rickie housed him," Brown said. "It was one of his hard ones."
“Yeah, you had to establish trust with him," Asberry said.
It's not unusual for Brown and Asberry to be making the rounds to various encampments throughout the city, they said, but on Tuesday, they were doing it for a specific reason: the annual Point-In-Time Count. Required by the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the count paints a picture of the level of homelessness across the country and provides data that organizations like Community Support Services can use to get more funding and services.
“Every 10 years they do the census for your average Joe, and a lot of the people that we interact with on the daily are not being counted at that time," Brown said. "So this is a way to try to get some kind of measurement of the homeless population in the country.”
People experiencing homelessness are also surveyed at shelters and drop-in centers, Brown said.
"Basically just basic demographic information, we don't even collect full names, initials, age, as well as information related to their homelessness, how long they've been homeless, how many episodes of homelessness," Brown said.
Advocates also ask questions about veteran status, disability, mental health and substance use, he said.
Although the numbers from the Point-In-Time Count won’t be finalized for months, Brown and Asberry expect to see another increase in the number of people experiencing homelessness, they said. Since 2022, the county has seen a 56% jump in homelessness, according to Point-In-Time Count data.
"From experience, it seems like substance use disorder is one of the most common factors in people experiencing homelessness, but we do see a lot of severe and persistent mental illness too," Brown said. "And those things often go hand in hand."
This increase is also seen state and nationwide. Since 2020, the homelessness rate has jumped 10% in Ohio and 33% nationally, according to the Coalition on Homelessness and Housing in Ohio. The coalition attributes this rise to a lack of affordable housing, rent inflation and the end of pandemic assistance.
