State housing officials said the decline in pandemic-era housing support has made it more difficult to track the number of people who are experiencing homelessness in Maine.
Maine's latest Point in Time Count — a one-night survey in January — shows 1,000 fewer people experiencing homelessness. But housing officials said that number lacks important context about how challenging it has become to track people.
In recent years, programs to offer emergency shelter in motels and hotels have largely ended. That's one of the factors affecting the count, because people using those programs were easily tracked and recorded.
But the survey has a narrow definition of what is considered homeless, so people who were in motels but are now relying on informal solutions like couch surfing are not counted.
So while the number of people counted in emergency motels decreased by 1,600, the number of people in shelters increased by more than 100, and the number of people in transitional housing increased by more than 400.
These shifting populations may be people moving from emergency motels to shelters or to transitional housing, but it's difficult to know for sure and to compare to past years.
