LEXINGTON, Ky. (ABC 36 NEWS NOW) — The Catholic Action Center has released the results from its annual street survey, it shows a 24% increase in the number of people experiencing unsheltered homelessness. Jarred Paull with the Central Kentucky Housing and Homeless Initiative says House Bill 5 was a large factor in this year’s surveys. “We learned a few things…
LEXINGTON, Ky. (ABC 36 NEWS NOW) — The Catholic Action Center has released the results from its annual street survey, it shows a 24% increase in the number of people experiencing unsheltered homelessness.
Jarred Paull with the Central Kentucky Housing and Homeless Initiative says House Bill 5 was a large factor in this year’s surveys.
“We learned a few things as we did this,” Paull said. “House Bill 5 was a big deal, it made people harder to find it made people more skittish.”
The survey also showed that 233 people reported being recently harassed for sleeping outside; 77.6% of them report being harassed by law enforcement.
“25% of the folks who are on our street, 25 percent of them, had been evicted since the first of the year,” Ginny Ramsey with the Catholic Action Center said.
Volunteers spent nearly 290 hours conducting over 680 surveys. They found the top factors for people experiencing homelessness included a lack of money, a loss of their job, and the increase in rent and housing prices.
“If we’re talking about thriving, we cannot thrive when 3,000 people in this count are homeless,” Council member Tayna Fogle said.
Children, parents, veterans, pregnant women and people from all different backgrounds are part of that number.
“You’re going to see a lot of data, a lot of numbers, but each one of these has a story, each one of these has a person, a name, a face so please keep that in mind,” Paull said. “It’s not just statistics, it’s actual people.”