On Jan. 27, an incredible group of officials and volunteers with the Metro Denver Homeless Initiative will fan out across the city to interview and count all individuals experiencing homelessness.
The point-in-time count, or PIT, occurs this way every year; local platoons of surveyors visit every known shelter, encampment, underpass, abandoned motel, and all the cars, campers, and tents in between to quantify homelessness across the United States during a single January day. This tedious process serves as the backbone of local and national homelessness policy decisions.
According to last year’s PIT, there were 9,977 persons experiencing homelessness including 2,453 young people just in the Denver metro area. Recently released data from the national PIT indicates U.S. homelessness swelled by 18% to over 770,000 in 2024, including a 33% increase in child homelessness to nearly 150,000.
While incredibly orchestrated efforts, PIT counts can feel akin to needles in a haystack. Denver County’s 2024 PIT, for example, relied on 25 two-person teams to count anyone experiencing homelessness in the 155-square-mile footprint of our city. That’s more than 6 square miles, or nearly 3,000 football fields of complicated city blocks, parks and alleys per team in a single day.
What if you are experiencing homelessness on a day other than Jan. 27? What if you are temporarily living with friends? Or in a motel? Or don’t want to talk to surveyors? With homelessness needs rising and budgets ever tightening, service providers nationwide do remarkable work in the face of an impossible task.
Our recent study collaboration with the University of Colorado School of Medicine and University of Denver affirms what homelessness experts have known for a long time: Point-in-time counts significantly underestimate homelessness, especially among young people. According to our research, the prevalence of youth homelessness (ages 14-17) in Denver increased from 10% to 25% from 2017 to 2021, far exceeding PIT estimates from that period.
One in 4 Denver youth experienced the spectrum of homelessness in 2021. Read that again.
The invisibility of youth homelessness is especially concerning because the more vulnerable youth go unidentified, the more they are not accessing critical services. All the while, myriad associated negative health effects — adverse childhood events, physical and psychological trauma, overdose, psychiatric decompensation, infectious diseases, weather-related injuries — descend like great plagues without remorse or delay.
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1:30 AM MST on Jan 20, 20252:10 PM MST on Jan 17, 2025And while homelessness affects every walk of life, we know it disproportionately impacts society’s most vulnerable — families of color, LGTBQIA youth and those experiencing psychiatric and substance use disorders.
I see these wounds, literal and metaphorical, in my work as an internist from the clinic to the intensive care unit. Homelessness maims. Homelessness traumatizes. Homelessness kills. Youth experiencing homelessness are 10 times more likely to die than their housed counterparts.
We cannot serve youth and people experiencing homelessness if we do not have complete means to identify them. We cannot serve people experiencing homelessness if we do not know they exist. And the unfortunate reality is homelessness prevention, rapid-rehousing, shelters and the entire safety net are tied to the heroic effort but ultimately incomplete numbers of the PIT.
I won’t claim to have the silver bullet, but I am confident that tying our level of funding and homelessness support to more comprehensive estimates is a crucial first step. We need state and local legislation to bolster their ranks, resources and methods so that in January 2026 we have a count that is representative of the true depths of the problem.
That will start with legislation and funding, with investment in data integration to connect the patchwork of service providers. PIT has been the count of the past 20 years, now we need to build PIT+.
Our recent analysis was only possible because of the availability of linked data between Metro Denver Homeless Initiative, Denver Public Schools and the child welfare system. This sort of infrastructure and data linkage is quite rare. While the numbers are disheartening, the viability of our methods is a bright spot and new tool in the homelessness toolbox that could be applied nationally.
Denver can be an innovative leader in this space.
The depths of the homelessness crisis are coming to light. Thousands of people — children, youth, families, neighbors, friends, and loved ones — won’t have a suitable place to call home tonight. Recognizing the scope of homelessness in our city is critical.
More important, however, is reappraising what we as Denverites will tolerate for those most vulnerable among us. We can sweep them under the rug, hide them from sight and mind. Or we can rise to the challenge.
Matthew Y. Westfall, M.D., is a Denver native and an internal medicine resident at the University of Colorado School of Medicine.
The views represented here are the personal opinions of the author and do not reflect those of the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus or the university.
Read our ethics policy for more on The Sun’s opinion policy. Learn how to submit a column. Reach the opinion editor at opinion@coloradosun.com.
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