'You're not going to find them all': Windsor homeless advocate casts doubt over 2024 Point-in-Time homeless street count

As municipal staff and volunteers in Windsor-Essex conduct the 2024 Point in Time (PiT) homeless street count and survey across the region, the administrator of a Windsor homeless centre said she doubts an accurate tally will be reflected when the count is done.

Street Help's Christine Wilson-Furlonger said she doesn't think the majority of the city's current homeless population will be accounted for, believing the true number to be in the thousands.

"I don't trust that count at all," Wilson-Furlong said, telling CTV News she believes there to be at least 3,000 people experiencing homelessness in Windsor today.

"3,000 people that are homeless on any given day. It's just that they're hidden homeless too. We have people that are living, in five, six, seven people in a little one-bedroom apartment. As soon as the landlord finds out, he closes it down, evicts the tenant and they're homeless again.

"You're not going to find them all. There are people that are very smart, know how to hide, and they're not coming out because they had their encampments torn down before. There are some very visible, smaller in hamlets, but we've become a society where we force people into hiding because they're poor and homeless," Wilson-Furlonger explained.

The federally mandated PiT count will see many trained volunteers deployed throughout the city and county to make sure those experiencing homelessness have the chance to be counted and surveyed, as a City of Windsor news release stated last week.

This is the fourth PiT count conducted in the region, with previous counts happening in 2016, 2018 and 2021. The last PiT event showed there were 251 people experiencing homelessness in 2021, an increase from 198 in 2018, according to city officials.

"It's grown to outrageous numbers, and it's growing because of lack of services," Wilson-Furlonger stated. "And let's tie this into this new thing where they want to now forcibly lock people up. Well, if you're not providing the services, I have people begging us, do we know a place where they can go to get away from the alcohol in their life, to get away from the drugs in their life. They want rehabilitation. They want to get well and become members of society again. Functioning members. That's what they want. They're begging for it."

City staff said the PiT count is an attempt to truly understand who is experiencing homelessness, looking to learn what their situation is, while also trying to understand how long individuals have been experiencing homelessness and what are those difficulties and challenges are that they're facing.

"We anticipate it's going to go up again significantly this time around," said Windsor's manager of homelessness and housing support, Kelly Goz. "We are seeing more homelessness. We are seeing more people on our city streets and in the county, and really just hoping to have a better understanding and to make sure that the data, and that we do know everybody as much as possible that is experiencing homelessness."

Goz noted Windsor is not alone in combating a growing homeless population, trusting the results from this latest PiT count will result in improved funding and programs from upper levels of government.

"Windsor has been able to stay fairly modest in what we're seeing on our city streets. But again, that has changed and evolved over the last couple of years," said Goz.

Goz said, "We can't ever assume that just by the way that somebody looks or how they're presenting that their experience of homelessness, that's why it is important to stop all members of the public that may be out in that designated area to make sure, again, that we are screening out if anybody is experiencing homelessness or not."

Goz said following the survey, a report will be presented to council that should help shape future decisions.

She added, "We know that there's a toxic drug supply that's really changing the landscape of what people and the members of the public see with regards to experiencing homelessness. We also know that we have increased numbers of people that are on our city's streets that may not go to emergency shelters. So again, just trying to get a better understanding of how agencies and different sectors can continue to work together in order to collaborate on solutions as opposed to continuing to do the status quo."

2024 Point-in-Time homeless street count starts Thursday evening and continues in the morning on Friday.