Submitted by North Georgia Veterans Helping Veterans, Ltd.
Local Veterans Organizations supported by the Cherokee Homeless Coalition will be conducting a count of the county’s Homeless population as part of the annual National Homeless Point in Time Count “PIT” the last week in January.
“This is a Cherokee and Pickens County-wide program and we are working with the other veteran organizations and Cherokee Homeless Coalition to help identify our fellow veterans and non-veterans who are living on the street, in their vehicles, or living in conditions that would consider them to be homeless by HUD standards,” said Jim Lindenmayer, director of the Cherokee County Homeless Veteran Program.
The Point in Time count this year will focus on what is called “unsheltered” homeless, which is what our county has, as we have no current homeless shelters. The PIT count is driven yearly by the Georgia Department of Community Affairs in support of the Housing and Urban Development “HUD” national initiative to track homelessness.
The count data collected locally via the PIT Count are rolled up to the State and then to the Federal Government, which publishes the data in the annual report to Congress on the homeless situation across America. The 2024 report can be found at the following address: https://www.huduser.gov/portal/portal/sites/default/files/pdf/2024-AHAR-Part-1.pdf
Around 23 out of every 10,000 Americans — 771,480 people — experienced homelessness in January 2024, according to the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) annual point-in-time report, which measures homelessness across the US on a single night each winter.
The various teams that will conduct the count will visit both rural and urban targeted areas to identify and record any homeless individuals they encounter.
We are asking for anyone who may know the location of a Homeless Veteran to please contact the program command team, which is led by Jim Lindenmayer, director of the Cherokee County Homeless Veteran Program at 678.983.7590 or via email at jlindenmayer80@gmail.com.
