On one day each January, communities across the country are engaged in a united effort: a de facto census of people who are living on the streets, in shelters or transitional housing on a single day in January, called the Point in Time Count, or PIT Count.
This year’s count takes place against a backdrop both old and new: local officials at both the city and county levels have approved significant investment in building future affordable housing.
At the same time, the past year has seen the closure of parks that once held some of Tucson’s largest homeless encampments; bans on camping in washes and parks that critics say leave people with few places to go; and the launch of a new city safety initiative that includes more targeted enforcement of unhoused communities.
Those changes come as federal funding for housing declines, and an ongoing gap remains between the sheer number of housing units Pima County needs and what is available.
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 county.
In 2025, the count found the number of homeless people in Pima County ticked up slightly over the previous year, from 2,102 people counted in the 2024 Point in Time Count to 2,218 counted in 2025.
The PIT count numbers are widely expected to be an undercount simply because it’s not possible to count every person, officials say. Find the 2025 data here.
Throughout the day, Arizona Luminaria will post short, on-the-ground updates from around the city as the count gets underway:
The view from HQ
9 a.m.
No detail is too small for Kat Davis’ attention on the day of the count: in the morning she is making sure extra gift cards are out, fielding phone calls to send support to areas that haven’t gotten as many surveys as might have been expected and making sure donuts and cookies dropped off by volunteers make their way to the people who have been staffing headquarters since before the sun was up.
By 9 a.m., nearly 900 gift cards had been given out, meaning volunteers had completed that many surveys with unhoused people in Pima County.
“That’s positive,” said Davis, who both wants to make sure people are being counted but would be worried if there was a large surge that seemingly pointed to a steep rise in homelessness.
As the continuum care lead team manager with the city of Tucson, Davis is overseeing the count and has spent months working toward the three events that make up the Point in Time count. The street count is taking place on Wednesday — Tuesday night saw the shelter count and Wednesday night will be the youth count where a group of organizations hold an event to encourage young people to attend and fill in the survey.
She understands the Point in Time count data as a sample of people experiencing homelessness, and looks at a data set of homeless service provision called the Longitudinal System Analysis collected over the course of one year.
The Point in Time count opens a door to talk about homelessness not from a problem stand-point, but as a reality that people in local communities contend with.
Davis wants people to focus on the structural difficulties that create homelessness, rather than framing it as a series of individual struggles. She also urges caution in how homelessness is perceived, noting that people living outside should not be conflated with individuals who may be in public spaces for other reasons — such as substance use— but who aren’t necessarily unhoused.
“Homelessness is a societal problem, and the result of many broken systems,” she said. “Everything kind of rolls downhill to homelessness.”
“Everyone needs somewhere to go. They need a place for their body to exist,” says Davis. “We need to be looking at ourselves as a society and asking: why are we allowing these folks to live on the street? Instead of: they’ve messed up and so now they’re living on the street.”
– Yana Kunichoff
“Take politics out of social welfare. It’s a health care problem.”
8:20 a.m.
The 15-foot tripod, a make-up bag, new car parts and clean T-shirts peek out of a stuffed shopping bag.
Izzy tamps the items down as a fire burns in a steel barrel about 5 feet away.
The 31-year-old stands among treasures he and a buddy foraged out of a dumpster on Tuesday night. Izzy wears a green knit cap underneath a black, pointy witch hat with a spider dangling from the tip.
Today’s focus is selling and giving away the bagged items — nearly all of them new, he says. The most precious item hangs around his neck: binoculars.
“They are worth like $200,” he says. “New.”
In a vacant lot just south of the Greyhound Bus Station, the duo gathers their bags and moves slowly in the 46-degree morning.
Izzy, who is Pascua Yaqui, grew up on the tribal land, he says. He declined to say how long he has been unhoused. But he was a casino bartender with an education, he says. He went to summer camp as a kid.
“Right now, being unhoused is a choice,” he says. “For some people they go through trauma or they never had a family to begin with. Some people were never able to hit that launch pad.”
People can be set up for failure, he said.
“There needs to be an abolishment of the law that makes it illegal to be homeless. Take politics out of social welfare. It’s a health care problem.”
He’s most supported by others he meets getting food at the Z Mansion or at parks. Some of those same people are the ones that “cause the most issues.” He calls them, “the purple people eaters.
“The purple people will steal your stuff. And you can spend all day trying to get it back,” he said. “And maybe that day you get no sleep.”
Izzy has been arrested, he says. And “that led to other charges.” The simplicity of his current life keeps him going.
“No day is typical,” he says. “I like it that way.”
— Shannon Conner
Circle K as the sun rises
7 a.m.
Kane Taylor didn’t expect to be in Tucson as long as he has been, but its been hard to get away. A car accident in 2021 left him with a pronounced limp — it also pushed him into a spiral of bad luck that ended with losing his apartment.
He’s been homeless since 2021, and on the day of the Point in Time count he is eating Fritos and nacho cheese outside of a Circle K off the highway. His belongings are in a shopping cart, and he’s wearing a gray sweater with the hood up to guard against the morning chill.
“It’s scary because you don’t know if you’re going to make it through the night,” says Taylor. Part of that is whether you’ll be assaulted or robbed, but the alternating heat and cold are also difficult.
He’s had trouble finding a shelter that works for him. “You have to go to rehab just to get a spot inside,” says Taylor. “With funding cut, everybody’s screwed.”
He has also had his share of trespassing tickets while sleeping outside in the washes and parks that city ordinances now make it prohibited to sleep in. Most of those likely have warrants, but he says that going to a warrant quash event can end in probation, a commitment he would find hard to keep up without a phone or steady place to live.
He’s saving for a bus ticket and one night in a hotel to help launch him out of Tucson. “Don’t come here,” is Taylor’s advice.
– Yana Kunichoff
Volunteers collect supply bags
Noon, Jan. 23
Point in Time Count HQ
It’s a rainy Friday in January, reminiscent of the 2025 point-in-time count when nighttime temperatures dipped into the 30s and a steady stream of drizzle punctuated the day itself, as Kyle Kerns is overseeing the process of handing out supplies to team leaders.
On the table in front of Kerns, a project coordinator with the Tucson and Pima County collaboration on homelessness, sits a stack of bags containing masks, hand sanitizer, flashlights and information packets for food and housing assessments. The supplies are meant to help volunteers conducting interviews with unhoused residents on Wednesday, Jan. 28 be as prepared as possible.
Team leaders trickle in and out, share a few jokes, grab a bag and with that quick handoff they are out.
It’s a steady and slow-paced view that belies the enormity of the operation that Kerns and other city and county staff will coordinate under the umbrella of the Tucson Pima Collaboration to End Homelessness — around 400 volunteers are expected to walk Tucson’s streets on Wednesday.
Kerns has been planning for the count since October, making sure as much of the city as possible will be walked by volunteers doing a questionnaire of unhoused residents.
He sees the count as a glimpse in time of homelessness in the region. “We want to be really intentional and make sure that we’re collecting data authentically,” he tells Arizona Luminaria.
Kerns has also helped train volunteers. What makes a good volunteer is someone who is compassionate, caring, and genuinely excited to give back to their community and speak to new people at a moment when homeless people are often looked down on, he says. “It’s honestly really heartwarming,” he says. “A lot of people we survey are just excited to tell their story.”
– Yana Kunichoff
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