(Credit: The Reporter/MediaNewsGroup)
The 2025 Point-in-Time Count took place Tuesday night as people experiencing homelessness endured a bitter cold night in Montgomery County.
“We’ve been doing the Point-in-Time count for so many years. This is definitely the coldest Point-in-Time count in my memory,” said Kayleigh Silver, administrator of the Montgomery County Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Housing and Community Development.
Around 70 volunteers traversed areas in and around Abington, Ambler, Ardmore, Bridgeport, Cheltenham, King of Prussia, Lansdale, Lower Merion, Pennsburg, Norristown, Royersford, Souderton, and Willow Grove to carry out the annual count mandated by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. The initiative’s purpose is to gain insight into the local homelessness situation.
“We are so incredibly grateful to all the outreach teams, volunteers, faith-based organizations, nonprofit partners who went out last night to engage with people experiencing homelessness,” Silver said.
Montgomery County Commissioners’ Vice Chairwoman Jamila Winder was among Tuesday’s participants. In a Facebook post describing her experiencing, she underscored the importance of the annual iniaitive.
“This crucial work helps us gather essential data about homelessness in our communities and provides an opportunity for direct outreach,” Winder said.
Participants were tasked with compiling answers in a “sensitive, trauma informed way” to find out where people were sleeping on Tuesday, as well as a number of demographic-based questions for participants including age, disability and veteran status, according to Silver, who stressed the federal survey was voluntary.
“We really try to center people’s choice and dignity at the forefront,” Silver said, stressing the importance of gauging the “immediate needs” of “people experiencing homelessness.”
“Where was their last permanent residency? And engaging, in some light, housing problem solving,” she said. “Is there any way to get you back inside and any way to get you back to a permanent housing destination?”
AccuWeather data revealed Tuesday’s forecast in Pottstown: a high of 16 degrees and a low of 0 degrees. It’s where Silver and several others spent the evening looking for people experiencing homelessness. Silver said volunteers donned snow gear as they traipsed through the snow, along trails near wooded areas. They also brought with them “survival gear,” Silver said, which included gloves, hand warmers and thermal packs.
“It was absolutely frigid temperatures,” Silver said, adding the supplies were “needed. It was definitely the most cold and frigid Point-in-Time count that I can remember.”
Silver said Street Outreach representatives visited homeless encampments to let them know about options for shelter during the cold snap as “Code Blue” remained in effect.
The emergency weather declarations are typically issued when “either the temperature or the wind chill is expected to be below 32 degrees Fahrenheit,” according to a Montgomery County spokesperson. Montgomery County officials ramped up efforts to increase capacity at temporary shelters during cold weather in late 2024. Dedicated funding was established around 186 beds at shelters assisting people in Lansdale, Norristown, Pennsburg, Plymouth Meeting, and Pottstown.
“We only engaged with a very small number of people, of single adults, who were still unsheltered,” Silver said. “Everyone had been offered Code Blue shelter options, and we’re also really grateful for all the hard work putting in to increase the number of Code Blue beds and emergency shelter beds, and I feel like on this PIT count it really paid off … because I think we were able to then provide shelter for a vast majority of people in need.”
Of the people Silver encountered on Tuesday night in Pottstown, she said they were “incredibly resilient and equipped to handle the cold weather,” possessing resources such as “thermal” items and “hand warmers” required “in order to keep them warm.”
Data related to the Point-in-Time Count will not be available for several weeks, county officials said. Homelessness has been on the rise in recent years, with 568 individuals reported experiencing homelessness in 2022, 357 people in 2023 and 435 people in 2024.
“The only prediction I’m really willing to make is that we are going to see high sheltered numbers compared to unsheltered numbers because of all of our efforts and the community’s efforts to increase the number of beds available to people experiencing homelessness,” Silver said.
More than 1,000 single adult county residents reportedly experienced homelessness last year, according to figures from the Philadelphia-based Resources for Human Development.
“Over this past year, we continue to see an increase in the systemic inflow into homelessness, due to the continued rising cost of housing and rising cost of living,” Silver said. “The inflow into homelessness, and people being pushed into homelessness, systemically, unfortunately continues to be very high while vacancy rates remain low. Rental and housing prices remain high,” she said. “It continues to be a tough housing affordability challenge.”
Silver has long attributed the lack of affordable housing stock, escalating cost of living, zoning issues, as well as prior impacts from the COVID-19 pandemic and from the remnants of Hurricane Ida as reasons for the uptick.
“We are still feeling the impacts of Ida,” Silver said of the 2021 storm that wiped out much of the area’s affordable housing stock.
Advocates and officials have observed homelessness rates continue rising in the state’s second wealthiest county that has gone without a homeless shelter for more than 2.5 years. Montgomery County announced plans to make some progress after earmarking $10 million in the 2025-29 capital improvement program fund over the next five years for a homeless shelter and signing a lease on a building to create a 20-bed supportive short-term housing concept in Lansdale.
A timeline to open the facility is not yet clear, but county officials emphasized that it’s top priority. Resources for Human Development will also serve as the provider agency. This comes a little more than a month after securing a roughly $2.7 million contract related to this effort.
“Homelessness is a complex public health problem, and it really can happen to anyone. We also know that our communities are strongest when all of their members are getting their basic needs met,” Christina Jordan, program director of Resource for Human Development’s Montgomery County Homeless Services, said last month.
All suspects and defendants are innocent until proven guilty. This story was compiled using public court records.
