Light of Hope Comes to Atlanta Homeless as HUD Volunteers Participate in Point-in-Time Count

Group photo of Atlanta Office of Regional Counsel and Multifamily Point-in-Time volunteers Photo credit: Mercy Care Atlanta

In the darkness and stillness of the night, when the occasional sound of passing cars rumbles by, in Downtown Atlanta and Five Points Plaza, adjacent to where they come to work each day, a handful of dedicated homeless Point-in-Time count volunteers from the Atlanta Office of General Counsel and Multifamily Housing, team up to reach out to assist in accounting for the homeless in the area. Working a shift from 9:00pm to 2:00am late last month the experience proved to be more then they anticipated.

"We didn't have much to offer the folks we encountered, but I think many of them were just appreciative that someone was willing to take a few minutes to listen to their story," said Angel Gordon Smith, with the Atlanta Office of General Counsel. "What I realized is that homelessness is so much more complex than living on the streets or not having a decent and safe place to call home. Hopefully, our small effort in volunteering for the Point-in-Time count will help to make a difference as the City of Atlanta continues to move toward eradicating homelessness."

The team led by Josh Gold (OGC) included Daniel Kaplan (OGC), Angel Gordon Smith (OGC), Coretta Johnson (OGC), Sam Williams (OGC), Shadi Traish (OGC), and Rhonda St. Peters (Multifamily) were very thankful for the training provided by the Atlanta Continuum of Care, at First Presbyterian Church and will likely never forget the homeless they met and serve and how their own lives were possibly changed forever, too.

Atlanta team working with homeless gathering essential PIT data

The Point-in-Time (PIT) count is a count of sheltered and unsheltered homeless persons on a single night in January. HUD requires that Continuums of Care conduct an annual count of homeless persons who are sheltered in emergency shelter, transitional housing, and Safe Havens on a single night. HUD uses information from the local point-in-time counts, among other data sources, in the congressionally-mandated Annual Homeless Assessment Report to Congress (AHAR). This report is meant to inform Congress about the number of people experiencing homelessness in the U.S. and the effectiveness of HUD's programs and policies in decreasing those numbers.

###