Results of the annual Point in Time headcount that was taken Jan. 22 of people who are homeless in El Paso County are being delayed, organizers said Friday.

This year’s census won’t be released for another 30 to 60 days, Kristy Milligan, chairperson of the board of the Pikes Peak Continuum of Care, said following a membership meeting. The group includes service providers, government leaders and citizens who plan the community’s response to homelessness.

“We’ve been met with unprecedented delays in verified data,” Milligan told members, citing changes to the U.S. Housing and Urban Development system. The federal agency requires communities that receive federal funding to conduct a yearly survey of homeless people.

The self-identified survey gauges how many teens and adults are sleeping in temporary transitional housing, emergency shelters, vehicles, tents and other uninhabitable places, the length of time they’ve been homeless and other information that’s used for calculating government funding, and also for local organizations to identify trends and plan assistance programs.

The survey is just one set of data the group uses in its work, leaders said. Another is the Homeless Management Information System, an online tracker of who eats at soup kitchens and sleeps in emergency shelters, uses other services, graduates to housing, and exits monitoring.

The number of homeless veterans reached a peak last August of 327 people, in the 12-month period from May 2023 to this May, statistics show.

In monthly tabulations in May 2023, there were 276 homeless veterans living in the community and 225 in May  this year. People who dropped off tracking increased, but leaders are unsure why.

Youths who are homeless in El Paso County also declined when comparing last May to this May, from 190 in 2023 to 170 in 2024. And the peak of 249 youths who are homeless also came in late summer and early fall.

A three-year strategic plan that ends in October will be replaced with new goals that are beginning to form. The Continuum of Care has hired Shawna Kemppainen, former CEO of the region’s teen shelter called The Place, as a consultant.

Kemppainen is assessing what exists in the community in terms of programs, structures, funding, collaborations, resources, strengths and weaknesses.

She’s sent out questionnaires to 18 homeless services providers and will talk with people who are homeless or formerly homeless about their needs.

From there will come a new direction with the same focus of reducing the number of people who lose housing, lessening the time they spend on the streets and helping them not to relapse into homelessness.

Of 666 homeless people who exited from any program without permanent housing last year, 26% became homeless again after two years.

Thus, “three out of four times, they are retaining their housing,” she said.

At six months out, 12% returned to homelessness.

Over the past three years, the community has been doing well in increasing the number of people who exit homelessness and enter permanent housing, from 160 in 2021 to 198 last year, the data shows. The group’s goal was 136 exits.

But the number of people who exited street living to shelters or other temporary institutional settings dropped to 79 in 2023, down from 160 in 2021.

And of 189 people who exited emergency shelters last year into permanent housing, 69 fell back into homelessness.

Leaders of the Continuum of Care also want to explore why the media, street-outreach teams and some service providers think a high number of homeless people have serious mental illnesses, such as schizophrenia or post-traumatic stress disorder that affects someone’s ability to function daily.

On this year’s Point in Time survey, 22% of homeless people in El Paso County self-identified as having a serious mental illness, in line with the national number of 21% of the homeless population and 5% of the general population, Kemppainen said.

Group members surmised that is low, due to social stigma and vulnerability in admitting one has a serious mental illness.

However, data from the Homeless Management Information System identifies more than 50% of the local population in that category.

Kemppainen said many people think mental illness is the major underlying cause of homelessness.

“How many programs are designed around that, how much space or capacity is it taking. What is it we should be doing?” she asked.

“This raises something we’re thinking all the time: This is one of the most complex issues of our time,” said Amber Ptak, CEO of Community Health Partnership, which administers the continuum of care. “We hear if we’d just address the mental health or substance use disorder. … We’ll never solve it by addressing one layer within the complexity. There is not one thing we’re going to do that has that kind of ripple effect. This has to be solved collectively.”