The preliminary results are in from the first Point-in-Time Homeless Count in North Bay.
Chair Kayt Elliot says on February 25th a committee gathered information to measure homelessness in our city.
She says 174 people were identified as either absolutely homeless or at risk of homelessness. She says community service providers are looking for this information to know what they are dealing with and what is happening in the city.
Elliot says they interviewed a number of the people identified as being homeless to find out what services they are using to find help.
On February 25th the survey found 30 people were absolutely homeless, which included those staying in shelters and unsheltered locations. It did not include shelters in other communities such as Nipissing First Nation, Sturgeon Falls and Mattawa which Elliot says could raise that number.
There were also 25 people staying in transitional housing and another 43 were identified as being at risk of homelessness. These were individuals staying in public systems such as the hospital or jail or at another person’s home.
Over 75 people were discovered to have no fixed address and were staying at the North Bay Regional Health Centre.
There were 98 people completed a survey for this study and Elliot says that only represents a snapshot of the homeless issue at any given point in time.
She says there is still more data to sort through and another report is expected to come out this month. Â Elliot says the information will give them a direction to go in to find ways of overcoming this issue.
She says they will go through the survey and results and see what gaps there are and how to prioritize the services.
Elliot says she had no expectations before going into the survey since this was the first of its kind in North Bay. She says she is just glad that they now have some figures to associate with the homelessness issue.
