The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s annual, nationwide Point-in-Time (PIT) count of homeless people is aimed at “getting a handle” on the scope of homelessness in this country.

However, that task during winter months can best be categorized as being barely meaningful.

How can a meaningful count be carried out during a miserable-weather month like January had been? Homeless people, more visible to others when better weather conditions exist, have resorted to whatever means they have been able to find to protect themselves from the brutal conditions that much of this country has been dealt.

Thus, they were out of sight and “unavailable” at places where surveys were conducted as Mother Nature pummeled those places with unrelenting, dangerous force and fury. Only one’s imagination can suggest to where some of those unfortunate individuals retreated as conditions and temperatures reduced chances for survival or, at least, avoided frostbite to nearly zero.

Lawmakers should be questioning why such an unrealistic survey was allowed, rather than postponing it to a time when a better, truer estimate could be compiled.

Contingency arrangements should be behind the survey to protect it from the kind of unrealistic numbers that the January 2026 survey produced.

Homelessness should not be such a big problem in a prosperous nation like the United States. Efforts must continue to deal with the problem more effectively, based on greater efficiency.

An unrealistic survey does nothing to advance that goal.

The Nationwide Point-in-Time (PIT) Count is an annual, U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) mandated survey of sheltered and unsheltered individuals experiencing homelessness on a single night in late January.

Conducted by local Continuums of Care (CoCs), it gathers critical data on homelessness trends to inform policy, with the 2024 count showing over 770,000 people experiencing homelessness.

The project’s aim purportedly is to provide guidelines for sending money to programs designed to prevent homelessness, but how can guidelines be realistic when the information upon which they are based is so far from being realistic?

That’s the most compelling question.