Arizona Luminaria reporters are covering the region’s annual Point in Time Count of unsheltered residents.
Check back here throughout the morning for a look at how the count is conducted and interviews with people experiencing homelessness in Tucson and Pima County.
Count workers visit Santa Rita Park and 100-Acre Wood
The sun rose over the open field dotted with clusters of tents at 100-Acre Wood Bike Park.
As the morning chill set in, some tended their fires in the sleepy silence. Volunteers hadn’t yet shown up for the Point in Time Count and most were yet to emerge from their tents.
The landscape was a mishmash of well-established encampments with outlined paths, central bonfires and makeshift walls. Some had cars parked near their tents, many were long-term residents. One blanket-walled set up featured a family photo at its entrance and a makeshift stove complete with a tamalera.
The early-risers worked together, feeding their fires and tidying the space. Despite not having trash services, many camps were clean and structured.
Point-in-time teams finally showed up to the bike park at 9 a.m.
Around that same time, about four miles away, Santa Rita Park was speckled with people. Some wandered through the yellow grass and past the empty tennis court. Others settled at the tables and benches with their belongings ready for transport in rogue shopping carts and other wheeled containers.
The air was cold but the sun was beginning to warm the frigid morning.
Volunteers had come around an hour ago, one person said. They offered $15 McDonald’s gift cards for anyone willing to take the survey, which asked basic information like name, age and where they’re sleeping.
“There’s more need and it’s more acute”
9:30 a.m.
While the community of unsheltered people who had been living in the park behind Sacred Heart Parish Church in Amphi Park are more dispersed, the parking lot between church and the fenced-off grass field remains a place where people can get food, medical services, and other necessities.
COPE Community Services runs a mobile RV medical clinic, where they offer fruit cups, granola bars, condoms, tampons, and water, among other items. Inside the RV, Susan Hadley serves as the primary care doctor, as well as addiction and wound care specialist, for dozens of Tucson’s unsheltered community.
COPE has run the mobile clinic for just over a year. They set up at Amphi Park every Wednesday morning and head to Estevan Park on Mondays and Sister José Women’s Center on Fridays. The schedule and services are listed on their website.
Hadley told Arizona Luminaria that they offer the “full spectrum of medical care” inside their converted RV. The triage chair is next to an electric fireplace, with the counter below the microwave stocked with basic medical supplies. Where the queen bed once rested is the exam table. The driver’s seat functions as both command center and office.
“I have a passion working for under-cared patients,” Hadley said. She said they set up the mobile unit because “we want to go where the homeless are.” That’s not always an easy task.
“The biggest challenge for us is the police sweeps,” Hadley said. She said they used to know where to find people, but unsheltered people more dispersed now.
About 60% of the patients Hadley sees haven’t seen a doctor in years, sometimes over a decade, she estimated. She said in recent years “there is more need and it’s more acute.”
Those sweeps and more frequent crackdowns are why fewer people are staying in the Amphi Park, another COPE employee, Russ Smith, said.
Hadley worries that in the next year or more, things will only get worse. She said COPE is funded through a variety of grants, including some federal grants, which may be in peril under the Trump administration.
The primary issues she sees and treats are wounds, often from injecting heroin, which Hadley says is on the rise, as well as problems with people’s feet. “They don’t have clean socks, any place to wash, and their feet get really bad,” Hadley said. She said it was a chronic problem with the unsheltered community that often gets overlooked.
Luis Espinoza, 63 years old, had just snagged a granola bar from the folding table outside of the COPE clinic. He slept last night in the Santa Cruz River on the south side of Tucson. He said he hadn’t talked to anyone from the Point in Time Count so far. He took the bus up to grab some food from the food pantry across the parking lot.
“The cold is harder, winters are tough,” Espinoza said. Walking with a cane, he made his way over to a folding table across the parking lot, behind which stood Terry Galbreath.
Galbreath has been coming to this parking lot almost every Wednesday and Saturday morning for the past five years. She helps manage the St. Francis Shelter Food Pantry — run inside the brick building behind her — handing out bags of food, toilet paper, and other basic supplies.
“We let them choose,” Galbreath said, explaining how they hand people a laminated list of items they have, letting them pick what they want with dry erase markers.
She said they hand out between 80 and 100 bags a week.
One man on a bike rolled up and Galbreath called out, “Hi Mark.”
Mark is a 65-year-old man who has been in and out of homes and shelters for over ten years.
As he sat on a cold folding chair with the list of pantry items, he stretched out his legs and crossed his laceless shoes.
“There’s different levels of homelessness,” Mark said. He said he has an income and social security. He had been staying for a while at the Wildcat Inn, a transitional housing shelter run by the city, before he recently moved into more permanent housing.
“I first lost my house for one reason, I became diabetic,” Mark said. He explained that after an extended health crisis, he struggled to get back on his feet. He said one of his sons died, another went to prison, and his diabetes and family struggles made it too hard for him to work. “I had some hard nights, out in the cold, but I also had a car, and sometimes stayed with friends. It’s always different,” Mark said.
He said that after his stint at the Wildcat, he was able to apply for Section 8 housing, and now has his own place and is off the streets. He worried, however, how long it might last.
“My son is struggling in prison, and I’m trying to work,” Mark said, beginning to cry. “I just don’t know what is next.”
After Mark turned in his list of desired items, the line began to dwindle. After handing Mark and then a woman their bags, Galbreath lit a cigarette and sat down at the table to scroll on her phone. Before she finished, a man with one leg pushing his wheelchair rapidly backwards across the parking lot, approached the table. Galbreath stubbed out her cigarette, greeted him, and handed him the list of items.
Care begets care between residents and homeless communities
7:15 a.m.
Ashley McCarthy, 30, is visiting 100-Acre Wood Bike Park on the day of the count. She and Joseph Harding, a longtime friend, stand around a fire pit: a hole dug in the ground and surrounded by rocks. A small fire smolders, filling the air with smoke but also offering some warmth on a cold morning. A partially eaten burrito sits on a frying pan near the fire pit.
McCarthy used to be homeless and is no longer, but has strong views on some of the difficulties for unhoused people.
Namely, says McCarthy, people respond to how they are treated by the public. Being treated well makes them more likely to keep areas clean or try to change their situation, but being rejected leads to anger: care begets care, she says.
Tucson has tried for years to remove people camping in the area, but with little luck.
The experience for unhoused people used to be different.
The area had more regular trash pick-up, says McCarthy, who lived at 100-Acre Wood Bike Park for a year and a half. Residents would also see more social workers, she said, which would be all anyone would talk about that day, buoying the mood.
“Hope is a big thing out here,” she said. “Give people an option to make something go for their life.”
About a year ago, still living in the park, McCarthy started working temp jobs that she would get through app-based platforms like Instawork or GigSmart. She saved money that helped her get a car, which was crucial in accessing the methadone treatments that helped her get off opioids.
“When I got on methadone, it helped so much,” she said. A few months ago, she moved to Phoenix to live with her boyfriend. Now she works at Jack In the Box where she makes $18 an hour, much of which goes to paying her $1,201 in rent. “I was able to function.”
She would like to see buses come to the park and take people to methadone clinics, and the chance for people to access stable housing once they are no longer on opioids so they have a choice beyond going to the same area where they were using.
Harding became homeless four years ago. Initially, he was living out of his car until it was towed — then he moved to the woods on the suggestion of a police officer who said he was less likely to be bothered by enforcement there.
He doesn’t have an ID or phone, both of which were stolen from him while staying at 100-Acre Wood Bike Park, and says that has been a barrier to getting stable housing.
“That kind of screwed me,” he said. If there was a way to get housed more permanently, he would take it. “If someone offered us housing, you think we’d still be here?” he said. “We want to get out of the streets, but we were dealt a crappy hand.”
“You can’t work or get on with your life if you don’t have a home”
7:45 a.m.
Navajo Wash is in central Tucson, just off Ft. Lowell Road and east of First Avenue, across the street from a Bubble Wash and next to a fenced-off apartment complex. It’s a small park with a few mesquites scratching out of the sandbottom. Three sun-beaten tents, along with tarped-over shopping carts, a broken easy chair, a couple strollers, a pleather suitcase, milk crates, piles of dirty blankets and other miscellany and human debris.
Ben, 34, has been living on the streets, mostly in washes and encampments, for two years. He’s currently staying in a tent in Navajo Wash with his girlfriend, Domenique, 31. “That is, until they kick us out again,” Ben said.
He’s wearing blue fleece gloves, a blue winter cap, and an oversized coat and sweatpants. His nose is dripping in the cold, and he’s slightly shivering.
Ben said that this morning the city came by and conducted a survey. They gave him a McDonald’s gift card and he said they seemed pretty nice. But he added that the tone officials take with unsheltered populations has changed over the past year. “They’re more harsh now. They used to be different,” Ben said.
“We’re dead weight, that’s how they see us.” He said they don’t arrest them or hurt them, but they threaten them and tell them to move on. “They take our stuff sometimes too.”
“I get it, they’re doing their jobs,” Ben said. Restrictions on shelters and housing makes it difficult for him to get on his feet. He said that’s because he and Domenique want to stay in shelters together, and they have a lot of stuff. It’s hard to find a spot that will take them.
“I wish they could understand that you can’t get work or get on with your life if you don’t have a home, if you don’t have a spot to shower. If I had a spot, I wouldn’t care about drugs,” Ben said.
He said he uses meth, mostly for the energy, but not fentanyl.
The hardest parts of living on the street, Ben said, were “the drugs, getting robbed, and finding a place to take a shit.”
He said that he watches out for Domenique and the other people in the wash. They’ve formed a bit of a community.
Justin, 44 years old, crawled out of his orange tent and starts rolling a cigarette. He was listening to Ben talk, and jokingly added, “Yeah, a community. I watch your tent when you’re gone and you steal my stuff when I’m gone.”
They had a laugh and Ben hands Justin his torch lighter. Domenique crawled back in her tent for warmth. Justin asked if it was really supposed to rain this afternoon.
“Winters are hard,” Ben said, “but so are summers.”
From sober living programs to the streets of Tucson
5:52 a.m.
For Dallas Tyler, 32, the nights are not very restful. After dark falls, they walk around with their shopping cart to avoid getting a trespassing citation, having their belongings stolen and often just to stay warm.
They rest during the day, when theft is less likely and the heat of the sun makes them more comfortable.
“I don’t really carry a lot of stuff and usually just have a backpack to put clothes,” they said. “Why would I keep materialistic items I can’t hold onto.”
On the day of the Point in Time Count, Tyler is walking in the streets behind Sister José Women’s Center. They didn’t speak to any homeless outreach workers but they did grab breakfast and a to-go lunch at the shelter.
Originally from New Mexico, Tyler first moved to Phoenix in 2023 to attend a sober living program. It closed in 2024, and they moved to another program in Tucson. That only lasted for three weeks before they found themselves homeless a year ago.
Tyler rarely stays in a shelter because some require ID, or they don’t have a regular phone to call and reserve a bed space. “Sometimes thankfully some people allow me to stay with them, like not people that have houses, but other people that have camps.”
If they want people to know anything about being homeless, it would be that it’s not something they would do with another option.
“Being homeless is not a choice,” they said. “We didn’t make the choice to be homeless.”
Point in Time count HQ gets moving
5:15 a.m.
The sky is dark outside when Corrie Brinley tapes a sign outside the University of Arizona classroom that will be the de facto headquarters of the 2025 Point in Time Count.
With 40 teams across Pima County leading around 400 volunteers, Wednesday morning is when the rubber hits the road. Brinley, a University of Arizona social scientist who is leading the coordination of the count with the Tucson Pima Collaboration to End Homelessness, provided the snacks: apples, mini oranges and protein bars.
“Leading up to this, it’s months and months of planning,” said Brinley. Today, those plans are put into action. That means coordinating if a team is short on supplies, can’t log into the digital survey or need extra supplies. “We’ll be just kind of navigating different problems that arise.”
Claudia Powell, associate director of the University of Arizona-Southwest Institute for Research on Women, has also been participating in the count as either a volunteer or coordinator for a decade.
For Powell, the team of county and city workers, as well as the southwest institute staff contracted to make the count happen, bring a strong mix of skills.
The institute contributes its expertise in evaluation and data collection to the operation of the count, while outreach workers can share where teams are likely to find unhoused people.
“We’re covering more areas where we know people are experiencing homelessness and sleeping outside, and having good information about where people are,” said Powell.
If there is anything Powell would like the broader Tucson community to know it’s how much homelessness is less about individual actions and more about the availability of a social safety net.
“The difference between people who are experiencing homelessness and those who are not is generally a safety net,” said Powell. “Sometimes that safety net is, you know, family or friends or other people. And sometimes that safety net is government.”
As Brinkley and Powell sip from their thermoses and wait for the day to unfold, they have an underlying anxiety. The count, as well as both of their positions and that of many other staff at their University of Arizona department, are funded by federal grants.
Those are uncertain as Donald Trump first ordered and then rescinded a federal aid freeze.
“You don’t do this kind of work because you’re going to become a millionaire, you do it because it’s important to you, but it’s also people’s job,” said Powell. Most of the people who are leading teams are paid on these grants, and we should appreciate those team leads and people who’ve participated in this process in spite of the uncertainty with their jobs and their livelihood.”
Tucson volunteers fanned out to conduct annual count of unsheltered residents
On Wednesday morning, hundreds of people in Pima County woke, many before sunrise, and headed out to the alleys, washes and city parks of Pima County to talk to unsheltered people.
They did that as volunteers with the Point in Time Count, also called the PIT Count, a de facto census of people who are on the streets, in shelters or transitional housing on a single day in January.
That effort is coordinated by the Tucson Pima Collaboration to End Homelessness which solicited for volunteers, trained them and appointed team leads who fanned out across the city. This year, the count took place Wednesday, Jan. 29 from 6-11 a.m.
That data collection effort offers a snapshot of homelessness in Pima County. It will be used to inform service and resource planning and be submitted to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.
Any number of factors can impact how many people are sleeping outside or in shelters, and how easy it is for volunteers to access them, on a given day.
Wednesday is expected to be unusually rainy. With nighttime temperatures expected to drop into the 30s, Operation Deep Freeze, Tucson’s effort to provide emergency shelter in cold weather, will be in effect.
Over the past decade, point-in-time data shows an increase in unsheltered people in Tucson and Pima County. In 2015, 1,863 people were counted, according to PIT data shared by the National Homeless Information Project; in 2024, there were 2,102 people counted. Even then, those numbers are widely expected to be an undercount simply because it’s not possible to count every person, officials say.
Source: Tucson Pima Collaboration to End Homelessness 2024 Gap Analysis
Those challenges come from a couple of areas, including poverty and the price of housing. Rent costs, for example, have increased sharply since 2017 in Tucson.
At the same time, shelter beds and overall resources toward preventing homelessness have not kept pace, according to an analysis of 2024 resources from the Tucson Pima collaboration. They have “not yet observed any slowing of inflow into homelessness and there is increasing visibility of unsheltered homelessness in our community,” the report said.
According to that report, while point-in-time data suggests homelessness is stable, data from the Homeless Management Information System, indicate that the number of people considered “actively homeless” have risen since 2020.
The report also suggested additional metrics which public officials could track: “the proportion of new inflow, households seeking services that were served, and returns to the system among those who did not exit to a permanent housing destination.”
Elizabeth Casey, an organizer with Community Care Tucson, helps coordinate a weekly distribution of food and hygiene supplies each week in Armory Park. The group has seen the need for materials increase, and in recent months has upped its clothing drivers and efforts to solicit donations to try to meet those needs.
For Casey, understanding why people aren’t choosing to go to congregate shelters and what their most immediate needs are is the most important information to access.
“What we hear from people a lot is the immediate things that would help them survive and give them humanity and dignity, and which we believe would reduce the root causes of crime, are bathrooms, laundry services, and water,” Casey said.
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