Number of Homeless Declines 12.5% in ’19

COURT HOUSE – The annual Cape May County Point-in-Time (PIT) survey of the homeless for 2019 shows a 12.5% decline in the number of homeless individuals compared to 2018.
The report, mandated by Housing and Urban Development as a condition of receiving certain federal funds, numbers homeless individuals in Cape May County at 90 for 2019 compared to 103 in 2018, and down from 157 in 2015, the high point for the last five years.
New Jersey experienced a decline in the state count of 5% with nine of the 21 counties showing an increase in homelessness. Cape May County’s numbers contribute about 1% to the state’s overall homeless numbers. 
Essex County led the list. They reported a total of 25% of the state’s 9,303 recorded homeless population. The highest year-to-year increase in percentage terms was in Somerset County, which moved from 206 to 301, an increase of 46%.
The PIT survey represents a count of sheltered and unsheltered homeless persons on a single night during the last 10 days of January each year. As part of the effort, New Jersey does a count of the unsheltered homeless each year even though U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) requires the unsheltered to be counted every two years. 
The Survey
The count for 2019 occurred Jan. 22. At that point in January, a Canadian high-pressure system locked in two days of sub-freezing air. Jan. 21 was the worst day, but low temperatures Jan. 22 remained below freezing.
As one might expect, the count of those in shelters on that night is much easier than the count of the unsheltered. The unsheltered numbers were arrived at through the use of a paper-survey tool, personal interviews, and local agency case records.
Monarch Housing Associates, a non-profit advocacy group, provides training, tools and technical assistance to a network of organizations and agencies that rely heavily on volunteer surveys across the state’s 21 counties.
A Monarch press release explained that while the PIT survey provides “a snapshot of homelessness in a particular area,” the reality is “that the number of individuals experiencing homelessness is two to three times larger than the number counted.” 
Cape May County by the Numbers
The survey for 2019 found 90 homeless individuals in the county comprising 64 households. A household means “any group of persons who, if they were able to attain permanent housing, would choose to live together.”
The report states that 80 of the homeless persons were sheltered for the night Jan. 22. The remaining 10 individuals were unsheltered.
While the annual counts show the overall numbers of county homeless declining, the number unsheltered on the night of the count has increased each year for the last three years, moving from six in 2017 to eight in 2018 to 10 this year.
The age distribution in the report shows that one in four of the homeless individuals recorded in the count are under the age of 25, with 10% of the total 5-years-old or younger. The largest number in the count, 40%, is in the age range of 35 to 54.
Homelessness is not distributed evenly across race. While the vast majority of the homeless in the survey identify as white non-Hispanic, that is in line with the predominance of that group in the general population.
While blacks or African Americans comprise 4.5% of the county population, they represent 10% of the population experiencing homelessness.
Those who identify as Hispanic or Latino are reported living in poverty at double the rate of the general population in the county, 20.2% rather than the county average of 10.3%. The report shows a high correlation between poverty and homelessness.
When comparing race to the major reasons individuals reported their homelessness, blacks’ responses show that 33%, one in three, were asked to leave a shared residence.
White non-Hispanics cited domestic violence as the single biggest cause of their homelessness. Hispanic and Latino individuals most often cited eviction as the cause.
Chronic homelessness is defined by the length of time an individual has been homeless and/or the number of times the individual has been homeless in the last three years. This is often associated with some form of disability.
For Cape May County, the number of chronic homeless is on the rise. PIT reports for 2015, 2017 and 2019, all years in which HUD required the count of the unsheltered, show an increase in the chronically homeless in the county moving from eight to 13 to 24.
With 24 individuals identified as chronically homeless in 2019, that category has grown to represent 27% of the total number of homeless reported.
The PIT survey states that most of the county homeless have been without a residence for less than a year, yet a quarter of the population included in the report has experienced homelessness for more than a year.
The report captures four veterans in the homeless count, a number that some advocates for veterans say is an undercount. The number is down from seven reported in 2016.
Domestic violence is correlated with 26 of the 90 individuals or 28% of the population.
Five percent of the records indicate that the last permanent address before becoming homeless was outside the county. 
New Jersey and the Nation
Homelessness is everywhere, but it is also concentrated in specific areas of the country.
Nationally, New Jersey’s homeless population represents less than 2% of the total, as reported by HUD. Numbers from the United States Interagency Council on Homelessness show that two states, California and New York, account for 40% of the total number of homeless individuals reported. 
These states are then followed by Florida and Texas. The four states combined make up about a third of the national population, but they account for over half of the country’s recorded homeless total.
Florida and Texas have the highest concentrations of homeless veterans.
Speaking on the importance of timely data for the implementation of strategies to combat homelessness, Monarch CEO Taiisa Kelly said in a release that many complex “issues intersect in the lives of regular people struggling to get back on their feet.” She added that “housing is a right for all people.”
The full Cape May County report is available here.
To contact Vince Conti, email vconti@cmcherald.com.
Editor’s Note: The graph for this article has been revised.