Point in Time Count

The 2024 Point in Time took place on January 24, 2024. The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) allows communities to count for 14 days past the kickoff date to ensure that anyone who experienced homelessness on January 24 is counted. Hennepin County is the lead convener and oversees the planning and operations of the PIT count.

The goals of the PIT count are to:

• Identify how many individuals and households are homeless in a community, including those living on the street or in other unsheltered locations
• Monitor how homelessness changes from year to year
• Assist with local planning efforts
• Meet HUD’s requirements

Timeline

This year's PIT count took place on the:

• Night of January 24, 2024, for observation counts only, and;
• Days of January 25th and 26th at drop in, meal sites, etc. to connect with and survey households who were unsheltered on January 24, 2024.

Media inquiries

For information about the count, contact Maria Elena Baca by email at maria.baca@hennepin.us or by phone at 612-348-7865.

PIT count finds more homeless families, fewer single adults, people experiencing unsheltered, chronic homelessness

Census aimed to learn where people spent the night on January 25, 2023

The count found that in Hennepin County, 2,843 people were staying in shelters and transitional housing programs, and 469 people were experiencing unsheltered homelessness.

Those numbers compare with 2,191 and 487, respectively, in 2022, when Hennepin County counted the lowest number ever of people experiencing homelessness.

They are the highest since 2019, when staff and volunteers counted 2,797 people in shelters and 603 people in unsheltered settings.

When the count started in 2005, 3,058 people were in shelters and 357 were in unsheltered settings.

The overall increase in people using shelter was driven by a spike in families experiencing homelessness. That number was up by 79%, after a several-year downward trend. A number of causes factored into that change, including the end of the eviction moratorium, record inflation affecting prices of food and fuel, and other issues.

As a result of Hennepin County’s shelter-all policy for families, more than 99% of those families were in shelter or transitional housing.

Homelessness was down among several other populations since 2022: 

• Single adults: -7%
• People in unsheltered settings: -4%
• Veterans: -5% 

Get more information

Minneapolis/Hennepin County PIT Count reports from 2005 to 2022 (HUDExchange.info)