This week is the annual Point in Time Count, an effort to tally every homeless person in the Cape Fear region.
The 2025 count will take place tonight in Brunswick County, tomorrow in New Hanover, and Thursday in Pender County.
Andrea Stough is the Homeless Services Director for the Cape Fear Continuum of Care, which runs the count each year. She said they work hard to count everyone with the help of service providers and other partners, but each year is still likely an undercount.
“Despite our best efforts and methodologies change, we do fully understand that, you know, it's really difficult to do an extensive count a lot of folks that are maybe sheltered in their cars, they’re harder to kind of locate," she said.
Stough said there are also a lot of people who don’t want to be counted, but having the most accurate numbers possible helps with securing grants and directing resources to the right services.
The count includes both sheltered and unsheltered homeless people. Last year, 593 people were counted, more than half of them unsheltered.
