Homelessness may have decreased slightly in Boulder County since last year, according to recently released data from the Metro Denver Homeless Initiative. However, that same data suggests that homelessness is still increasing overall throughout the Denver metro area, as it has over the past few years.

Across the country, growing numbers of people are losing their housing as rising rents and inflation take their toll. According to the National Alliance to End Homelessness, a 2020 study indicated that for every $100 increase in median rent, homelessness rates go up by 9%.

Incomes also are not increasing enough to cover the soaring costs of living.

For years, MDHI has conducted annual Point-in-Time counts of how many people in the Denver metro region, as well as each of the seven counties in MDHI’s Continuum of Care, are experiencing homelessness on a single night in January.

Each count offers a snapshot of homelessness at that moment in time, and though it can’t provide a precise count of all of the unhoused people in the region, it can help determine the general scope of homelessness in the area.

This year, in Boulder County, the count identified 727 people experiencing homelessness on the night of Jan. 22 compared to 839 people on Jan. 30 of last year. This year’s count is lower than last year’s, which was the highest in the previous seven years.

But these numbers are not indicative of the Denver metro area as a whole: The January 2024 Point-in-Time Count showed 9,977 people across the Denver metro area experiencing homelessness, up from 9,065 people last January and 6,884 in January 2022. Those upward trends track with rising rates of homelessness across the country.

MDHI has said that comparing Point-in-Time Count data year-over-year doesn’t always capture homelessness trends accurately. There are many variables that can skew each year’s count, such as the weather, the methodology of the count and the number of people who participate in it.

Boulder city and county officials warn that, while there are some signs of hope, homelessness remains a dire issue here. However, there do appear to be more and more people finding their way into housing, whether through city or county programs or through new housing that has recently been built.

Heidi Grove, director of the Homeless Systems and Coordinated Response division of the Boulder County Housing Department, said as rental costs continue to rise, pandemic-era social safety net funding, such as American Rescue Plan Act dollars, are vanishing.

“We don’t have emergency rental assistance dollars like we did during COVID. Those monies are gone. And so people who were using that as supplemental gap funds — those are no longer available, and so people are falling into eviction,” she said.

At a county level, the number of people enrolled in the Coordinated Entry program has increased by 10% since last year, according to Grove.

Coordinated Entry is the first program that unhoused people need to enroll in to access public homelessness services and resources in Boulder County, Boulder and Longmont.

The uptick in Coordinated Entry enrollments could suggest that more people are becoming unhoused but also that more people are engaging with services that could help them find housing again. Grove said people who have recently lost their housing are more likely to engage with services than people who have been unhoused for a while.

The number of people finding their way into housing also currently sits at 27% of the number of people becoming homeless — the county usually averages about 30%. In Boulder, exits from homelessness have gone down by about 1%. But drops in the homelessness exit ratio don’t necessarily mean, on their own, that fewer people are exiting homelessness, Grove said. In fact, the number of people finding their way out of homelessness has increased. It’s the number of new people seeking services that have lowered the exit ratio.

“You’re taking how many people present seeking services and then how many exited (homelessness) in the same given month,” she said. “And so if you have more people seeking services with the same amount (of people exiting), your exit ratio is going to drop.”

In Boulder, Andy Schultheiss, a spokesperson for All Roads (formerly Boulder Shelter for the Homeless), said that even since the shelter expanded its overnight capacity from 160 to 180 people in July, it has still been “overflowing.”

However, Schultheiss said that since the shelter opened for daytime services in June, he has seen more unhoused people starting to participate in services.

“We’re gradually increasing the number of people who are participating at the day center without having slept the night before. And a big barrier for us is always that the only people we’re seeing are the ones who are able to sleep in that kind of setting,” he said. “… Now we are slowly but surely gaining that trust, which is honestly the primary reason for doing the day (services).”

In addition, new permanent supportive housing facilities, which offer support services for people transitioning out of homelessness, have created a significant amount of new housing, and a new facility is slated to open soon.

40 people moved into housing in January alone, when the Bluebird facility opened in Boulder, shortly before this year’s Point-in-Time Count, which may account for some of the reduced numbers in Boulder County.

And in the next four to six weeks, the new Zinnia permanent supportive housing project is set to open in Longmont, which will provide another 55 housing units.