The Tucson city council discussed last year’s data about the unhoused at its Feb. 18 meeting.
Community Safety Program Director Brandi Champion said the city is continuing to take a “balanced approach” in the areas of enforcement, outreach and housing pathways in connection to the unhoused community.
“The goal here isn't just to clear people out,” Champion said. “The idea of this is to get people into the services they so desperately need, aligning them with services that will get them to a place of stability and keeping our communities and our neighborhoods safe.”
Kat Davis from the Tucson Pima Collaboration To End Homelessness said that 5,974 unhoused people were served last year, 9% more than the year before.
She added that there was also a decrease in the average number of days people spent being homeless, improving from 106 to 89 days in a year.
“This is over two weeks of time where people are no longer on the streets, reducing harm, trauma, stress,” she said.
Despite the progress, challenges still remain as the city experienced an increase in people returning to homelessness. Davis said the coalition has established a new Prevention and Stabilization Committee to help prevent future increases in homelessness.
Multi-agency resource coordinator Justin Hamilton said that an increased number of unhoused people are accepting services. This number stands at 50% as of the last three months.
"We've had long standing challenges over and over again with service acceptances, and I've personally witnessed this with our deployments, the trust that we've built with our clients has improved too,” he said. “Not only are we building trust in the community, we're also building trust with our clients by our follow through and our consistency through our deployments.”
The City of Tucson declared a housing and homelessness emergency on Feb. 3 after closing the waitlists for public housing on Jan. 1. The emergency period will be in effect for a year.
