The City of Yellowknife will soon be conducting a “Point-in-Time” count of the city’s homeless population.
This will be the fourth PIT count the city has ever performed, and it is part of a national effort to measure homelessness across Canada. The last Yellowknife count was conducted in 2021, and revealed that there were 312 people experiencing homelessness.
The PIT count identifies the different ways that people can experience homelessness, by identifying those who are staying in shelters, those who have short-term housing, and those who sleep without any shelter over a 24-hour period.
Volunteers will be visiting different areas of the city to survey visible members of the homeless population. There will be no door-to-door surveys. This count will help the city determine the needs and circumstances of homeless people, and the results will help find the different demographics of the city’s homeless, and will inform future policy decisions.
Ben Hendrikson, a Councillor with the Community Advisory Board, said that “The Point-in-Time Count is key to understanding homelessness in Yellowknife. This federally mandated process will help us gather crucial data to better target our resources and improve support for those in need.”
