By Brooke Stephensen | Boulder Reporting Lab
In January, volunteers counted 727 people experiencing homelessness in Boulder County. While this is a decrease from last year’s count of 839, it is still the second-highest figure recorded since the count began in 2017.
The Point-in-Time report, published on Aug. 13, is a count of the number of homeless people on Jan. 22, 2024. Mandated by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and conducted by the Metro Denver Homeless Initiative, the data provides some of the most reliable indicators of homelessness trends in Boulder County and across the Denver metro area, despite year-to-year variations due to weather, methodology and volunteer turnout.
Of the 727 people counted, at least 193 — over a quarter — were unsheltered, a slight decrease from 243 in 2023. This refers to people whose primary nighttime residence is a place not meant for regular human sleeping, such as a car, park, abandoned building or station. Another quarter were living in transitional housing, while the remaining half slept in emergency shelters.