The count is a snapshot of what homelessness looks like on any given night. Service providers canvass a community, interview unhoused people to learn more about their situation, and try to get an idea of how many people there are. It’s a U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development requirement and it’s conducted on a single day during the last week of January.
In rural Nevada, the number of unsheltered individuals jumped from 314 to 348, the highest number seen in 10 years.
Michele Fuller-Hallauer, CEO, owner and chief strategist of Winged Wolf Innovations, the contracted coordinator, said what stood out to her is the number of unhoused people with a consistent source of income, which is nearly 40%.
“We just have no affordable housing in our rurals. That really tells me that if we had places for folks to rent, they’d be able to rent, they wouldn’t be outside, they wouldn’t be experiencing homelessness,” Fuller-Hallauer said.
It’s something Jackee Stewart, the office supervisor for Churchill County social services, has seen as well when she connects with unsheltered individuals who are employed or receiving benefits such as social security.
“Either they don’t make enough to pay living expenses, rent, utilities, stuff that comes with being in a home, or there have been people that they don’t want to use their money for those expenses because it uses up all their money, so it’s like they’re going to work just to pay rent and bills,” Stewart said.
The community members that Stewart connects with are sleeping in their cars, RVs sometimes without power, or tents. Another challenge is that there are no long-term shelters in rural Nevada.
Lyon and Nye counties have seen the most significant increases in the number of people experiencing homelessness, with numbers decreasing in Carson City.
Carson City Health and Human Services director Nicki Aaker attributes the reduction to the services provided, such as assistance with legal documents, reunification for people who have somewhere else to live, and Night off the Streets, which rotates churches where people can sleep from November to March.
Carson City also received two new housing grants.
“One allows us to provide emergency sheltering by utilizing hotel rooms for short-term housing to our most vulnerable individuals experiencing homelessness while we work towards the goal of permanent housing, and the other is a shared housing model that allows two unrelated individuals to share housing while being case managed as separate households,” Aaker said in a written statement to KUNR.
Fuller-Hallauer would like to see more affordable multi-family housing units, landlords with vacancies open to working with housing vouchers, and manufactured homes with utilities on public lands in rural Nevada.
