The overall number of homeless persons in Orange County is down from last year, according to the Orange County Partnership to End Homelessness.

80 persons reported being homeless in Orange County in January of this year, compared with 129 in January 2015.

That number includes people living on the street, as well as those living in a shelter but were homeless when they began living there.

Corey Root is the homeless programs coordinator for Orange County.

“So we’re not quite sure why this year or how this has happened,” said Root.

Root said they may have simply missed some people in the count or people might have left the county.

“Maybe it’s that folks have left Orange County for some reason and it’s not that they’re housed but they’re homeless somewhere else,” said Root.

Or the numbers reflect a true downward trend in homelessness. Chapel Hill is home to several organizations that actively work to combat homelessness like the Inter-Faith Council, which operates the community houses and kitchens in town and food relief organizations like TABLE and PORCH.

“I think the general consensus of people who work in housing and homelessness is this is not a perfect number but it is a number,” said Root. “And it’s something that we can use to talk, to start the conversation or continue the conversation around homelessness.”

Even if they aren’t spot on, Root said the numbers can still teach us something.

“Since we’ve been doing it for so long now we do have some trends,” said Root.

Root said that numbers of specific groups they target, like families with children and veterans, are going down too.

According to the numbers, six children reported being homeless in January of this year compared with 19 in 2015. All of them were living with at least one family member.

The number of homeless veterans is down from 12 in 2015 to 7 in 2016; veterans make up 9% of the total homeless population in Orange County.

Root said she has only been working for Orange County for about 7 weeks. In that time the main difference she has noticed from her previous job serving rural North Carolina counties is a different attitude towards homelessness.

“In my previous role a lot of the time, talking about this is why we need to help people that are homeless and here people are like of course,” said Root. “We don’t spend a lot of time on that part of the conversation, we spend the conversation talking about solutions.”

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