On January 30, 2007 Burke County counted  homeless individuals and families living in emergency shelters, in transitional housing programs, in the woods, on the streets, and in cars or other unsheltered locations.  This count was the first coordinated enumeration of homeless people in Burke County using consistent data collection methods. This historic effort brought together non-profits, city and county agencies, and concerned citizens to gather critical data that will be used to inform efforts to end homelessness in Connecticut and by communities across the state in their applications for federal homeless assistance funding.

The data collected will help service providers and policy makers to better understand the dimensions of homelessness and help to establish, over time, a means to measure the effectiveness of initiatives to end homelessness.

 The organizers of Burke County Point-In-Time count recognize that continued data collection at regular intervals will be necessary to understand the dynamic causes of homelessness, to evaluate the effectiveness of programs serving homeless people and, ultimately, to track progress towards ending homelessness in Burke County.