Media Advisory: Point in Time Count to take place October 2nd in the District of Thunder Bay - The District of Thunder Bay Social Services Administration Board (TBDSSAB)

Media Advisory: Point in Time Count to take place October 2^nd in the District of Thunder Bay

September 28, 2021 – An upcoming Point in Time (PiT) Count will soon help community organizations better understand and respond to homelessness throughout the District of Thunder Bay. The 2021 PiT Count will begin on Saturday, October 2^nd, 2021 at 6pm, and will run for 24 hours.

The PiT Count will provide vital information to participating communities about individuals and families experiencing homelessness, and contribute to the understanding of homelessness in the District of Thunder Bay. The PiT Count method is used to measure sheltered and unsheltered homelessness. It aims to anonymously count individuals in a community who are, at a given time, couch surfing, staying in shelters or sleeping outside providing a “snapshot” of homelessness in a community.

The 2021 PiT Count is funded by The District of Thunder Bay Social Services Administration Board (TBDSSAB), and administered in partnership with TBDSSAB, Lakehead Social Planning Council (LSPC), Thunder Bay Indigenous Friendship Centre (TBIFC), and with support from the Rural Cupboard Food Bank and People Advocating for Change through Empowerment (PACE).

This project is funded by TBDSSAB through the Community Homelessness Prevention Initiative (CHPI) fund. The TBDSSAB is the service system manager for Community Homelessness Prevention in the District of Thunder Bay. The Province of Ontario currently requires all CHPI service managers to conduct regular PiT Counts to inform service delivery.

The PiT Count will take place in the city of Thunder Bay at the Coliseum on October 2^nd at 6pm, and will include a vaccine clinic through the Thunder Bay District Health Unit. There are also numerous other locations where volunteers will visit to count. The PiT Count will also be held at PACE offices in Nipigon, Schreiber, Greenstone, and Marathon, and at the Rural Cupboard Food Bank in Conmee to provide a representative sample of homelessness throughout the entire District.

Additional Information:

PiT Counts include a survey that can provide communities with information on the characteristics of individuals and families experiencing homelessness (e.g. age, gender, Veteran status, lndigenous identity). This information can be used by communities to direct resources to areas of greatest need and to connect individuals to specific supports to help them achieve stable housing.
PiT count data is collected by trained volunteer canvassers who physically locate, count, and collect survey data from people experiencing homelessness.
As this method provides information for a single point in time, it is not intended to be a measure of everyone who experiences homelessness in a community over time and will not include some people who cycle in and out of homelessness. In addition, as this method focusses on unsheltered and emergency-sheltered populations, it is not intended to provide a count of people experiencing different forms of homelessness (couch surfing, temporary accommodations, etc.).
Previous PiT Counts for the District of Thunder Bay took place in 2016 and 2018.