As a result of record snowfall on Tuesday, Opening Doors Northwest Florida is making some last-minute adjustments to its 2025 Point-in-Time (PIT) Census Count of homeless individuals in Escambia and Santa Rosa counties.
After meeting via Zoom Wednesday morning to discuss the situation, the Opening Doors’ staff came up with a new game plan. For the first time in their nearly 40 years of operation, the organization opted to forego their “unsheltered” count.
“For the Point-in-Time count history of Opening Doors, we’ve done both counts just so we could keep a good trend,” said Executive Director Serene Keiek. “But, unfortunately, this year due to conditions of the weather and keeping the volunteers safe, we are going to do just the “sheltered” count this year.”
Keiek acknowledged that their decision is allowed by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), which only requires “unsheltered” counts on a bi-annual basis (every other year).
This means the count, focused on where people slept the night of this Wednesday, Jan. 22, will be conducted mostly tonight at places such as Waterfront Rescue Mission, REAP (ReEntry Alliance Pensacola), Bright Bridge Ministries, and cold weather shelters, including My Father’s Vineyard. And, due to lingering snow, ice, and more frigid temperatures, those locations should be full.
“We are praying that everyone will go to shelters tonight for their own safety,” said Keiek. “So with that type of reasoning in place, we thought tonight would be a record number of people that will go into shelters, which would be a really good time to conduct the “sheltered” count required by HUD.
Despite the weather, many preparations have proceeded as planned.
Frida last week, a crew of volunteers showed up for a care bag “stuffing” party at Opening Doors headquarters in Pensacola.
Angel Henderson, a case manager for Opening Doors, coordinated the event.
“So we gathered donations from the community and we used some of the funding that we were given to purchase all the items for the bags,” Henderson said. “And, we put out feelers for volunteers in the community and we had over 50 people show up today to help us out.”
Volunteers worked their way around the room, from table to table, picking up items to put in the bags. They quickly filled 1,000 bags that street outreach teams will begin handing out on Friday.
“We have a set of gloves, it’s a knit-wool blend; they’re very warm,” said Henderson. We also have a hat made from the same material. Each bag also got a pack of hand warmers. There’s one for each hand; these last up to 10 hours. We have some hand sanitizer and we did snacks.”
In addition to flashlights and personal hygiene items, the bags also include wristbands and free bus tickets to attend the You-Count Homeless Connect Event on Monday, between 9 a.m. and 1 p.m., at the Brownsville Community Center. Opening Doors is still seeking volunteers for the You-Count event, where individuals who are homeless can get hot meals and take advantage of numerous services that will be assembled to assist them.
This year’s Point-in-Time Count is taking place about a month after HUD released the 2024 PIT count report.
“There was a slight decrease from 2023 to ’24,” said Martika Baker, PIT count coordinator for Opening Doors. “Last year we saw 1,123 surveys completed with eligible people. And that was a decrease of about, 57 people or 57 surveys. The most people that we surveyed were in sheltered settings. There was a little bit more people in sheltered settings in 24, than there were in the year before. There were mostly unsheltered in 2023.”
Last year, the vast majority, 74%, of all sheltered and unsheltered people identified as male. Sixty-eight percent of the total were between the age of 35 and 64. In terms of race, more than half (58%) of the people included in the homeless count were White; while a slightly disproportionate 26% identified as African American.
Although there won’t be as much data available this year, Opening Doors' funding will not be affected. Additionally, Baker points out that even limited information collected will be helpful to their work to address homelessness in the community.
“We do look at the trends,” she began. “We're trying to understand, are we having a decline; we try to understand why is that. What new dollars came in from federal partners? Were there changes in programs? What is the performance of the program? So are we being more successful at, you know, addressing system performance measures, which are something that we have to always look at.”
Many of these questions and more will be answered during the 2025 PIT count in Escambia and Santa Rosa counties, which continues until Monday. The Homelessness and Housing Alliance will commence the annual count of homeless people in Okaloosa and Walton counties on Friday, Jan. 24.
