Central Oregon is no exception to the issue of folks without permanent housing at any given time throughout the year. On a single night in January each year, the Point-in-Time Count takes place nationwide to count sheltered and unsheltered people experiencing homelessness. In Central Oregon, this takes place in La Pine, Sisters, Bend, Redmond, Madras, Prineville and the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs Reservation. Information from this count provides data and insights to better understand the homeless population and provides effective support.
Rosie Laurie serves as the regional coordinator for the Central Oregon PIT Count this year. The Central Oregon Homelessness Leadership Coalition, a 503 CoC, is led by an executive team including Chair Eliza Wilson (Rooted Homes), Vice Chair John Lodise (Shepherd House Ministries–Redmond), and Secretary Carly Congdon (NeighborImpact). “I serve as the primary staff support for the HLC, which is a volunteer board, and COIC is the collaborative applicant,” Laurie explained. She says Central Oregon faces a unique challenge when coordinating multiple communities because each organizes their count differently.
There are two counts: sheltered, (includes emergency shelter and transitional) and unsheltered, which includes living in areas that are not meant for human habitation (abandoned buildings, outside, cars, etc.) The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development requires that Central Oregon do a count for each county annually. The Homeless Leadership Coalition acts as the Continuum of Care that provides support for the PIT in each county.
“This year, our approach focused on supporting each community’s process while ensuring consistency with HUD requirements and the overall integrity of the count. I’ve been very impressed with the dedication and coordination shown by PIT leads and volunteers across the region,” said Laurie.
Under this umbrella are the volunteers who provide boots on the ground and assembling data in real time. It is no small task, as many volunteers reach out to camps outside of city limits, as well as shelters, food panties, hotels, and soup kitchens. The count also includes people who may temporarily live with relatives or friends, (also known as couch-surfing), people living in trailers without water and sewer hook-ups, barns and sheds or garages on the property of a relative or friend.
The numbers are not finalized until early spring, when all the tri-county areas compile data for a final report that breaks down the data. The preliminary and “unaudited” numbers were available for Crook County as of Feb. 3. The numbers showed a total of 203 homeless individuals in the city of Prineville, and 63 in outlying areas. Although unaudited, it currently reflects 63% of last year’s count, which was 388.
“The reason for the lower numbers this year, is in part, due to the fact that we were able to house over 30 people that we had come in contact with last year, through the services that are offered,” said Redemption House Ministries Director Cindy Jacobsen.
Preliminary numbers were not yet available for Deschutes or Jefferson County. The overall 2024/2025 PIT count for Central Oregon included 1,252 electronic interview surveys, 190 observational surveys completed, with 666 in shelters across the region. A total of 2108 unique, unduplicated people were included in last year’s Point in Time Count. In the spring, the HLC will tabulate and gather data from the total of homeless people counted from this year’s surveys.
A closer look behind the data
Jacobson has been the director for Redemption House Ministries in Prineville since 2019, and she has been with the organization since 2013. A pilot program began in 2024, that included reaching out to surrounding encampments in Crook County. It has gone from identifying two camps to eight camps where homeless people are living. They take food boxes, blankets and water to these locations during their count.
“For me, it was just eye-opening how many women and children were out there alone, and veterans and older people,” said Jacobson. She added that seeing families living in an RV with no running water or hook-ups is heart-rendering. Jacobson met people who ended up homeless because they couldn’t afford rent, and many had medical situations.
“This year I am going out with my team, and I feel it is very important. I do love going out and connecting. We can get so caught up in our offices and try to put all our numbers together all the time to bring in all the funds and all that, that sometimes we kind of forget what we are doing it for. I get my whole team involved, to go out and actually meet the people and get the stories and hear why they (our team) are here pulling together all this stuff and working the hours that they do, because we are a small team.”
Jacobson emphasized that there’s a variety of homeless people and reasons why they are there. When they become homeless, many go into survival mode and feel hopeless.
“We let people know that there is still hope, and there are still people who care, and we are here to help you. If you want to help yourself, we will help you with a hand up. We are not just here for the handout, but a hand up. We have got some good responses to that,” she said about their outreach.
Shenika Cumberbatch Corpas, Community Partnership coordinator and contract administrator for Crook, Deschutes and Jefferson Counties, works with a large number of people who helped with the PIT count. They ask each homeless participant, “Where did you sleep the night of the 26th (Jan. 26)?”
In Bend, organizations that helped with the outreach include Shepherd’s House and Central Oregon Veterans Outreach. Cumberbatch Corpas said one of the big takeaways last year for her was a rise in numbers.
“For me it was the increase, noticing that the count has not decreased and we are seeing these numbers rise. We are trying to find out where the gaps are and trying to do what we can to really capture folks and have those conversations.” She added that the issue is complex, but they want to try to figure out how to support these people and identify the services needed and the gaps that exist. One misconception she encounters is that people choose and prefer to be homeless and live off the system, and no matter what, they do not want to work.
“We actually know that is not the truth. No one chooses to be homeless,” she emphasized. She added that it can happen easily, from losing a job or having medical problems, and it can happen in an instant. “For folks who are homeless — it’s not a choice.”
Stories behind the faces
Behind each number is a story. Volunteer Camille Jones shared some of their stories with the Source. One story involves James, born in Portland in 1940. He hitchhiked to Prineville in 1959 to help fight wildfires and fell in love with the area. After his career in the Air Force and working odd jobs, he retired to care for his ailing father.
James moved to Prineville in 2020, hoping to buy a piece of property in Summit Prairie. In the meantime, he bought a used Airstream and moved into an RV Park. Unfortunately, the dip in the market at the beginning of COVID affected the trust he’d received from his father, and his dreams of owning property slipped away. Now, he is dependent on social security and VA benefits.
Julie, James’s daughter, is college-educated and spent her career working for banks. She lost her full-time job shortly after testifying against her boss in a human trafficking case. Afterward, she became a contract worker. For six years she’s dealt with being fired from a variety of companies with little to no notice since she had no worker protection.
She and her husband have bounced around — sometimes able to rent their own place, sometimes staying with friends and relatives. Every time she is let go, it feels like three steps back until her current situation, which she considers a true low: living with her father in his rundown Airstream with no hook-ups. She applied for SNAP and housing assistance and continues to get work as she can, but the three of them mostly rely on James’s social security and VA benefits. Their situation has remained the same since COVID.
Jennifer Woods shares a story both as a volunteer, an employee of Redemption House Ministries, and a woman who has experienced homelessness. She volunteered for the PIT count and was part of the Redemption House outreach team in 2024/2025 going into camps in the outer areas to count individuals who weren’t counted before because they didn’t have an outreach team. “A big part of how the numbers increased was not necessarily that we had more homeless people, but we had more resources to do the count.”
Woods indicated that her involvement feels personal. “I actually stayed at the women’s shelter for Redemption House Ministries and I became an employee. Many of my co-workers have also had the same journey — this is in our heart, and we are passionate about it because we have had the support and the ability to get back on our feet after whatever our situations were that we came from.”
Woods emphasized that one misconception is that homeless people are always coming to the community from somewhere else. She said that many times they are folks who have lived in the area for a long time, and many were previously housed. Another misnomer is that they are homeless because of drugs and choices.
“I can speak from my own personal experience. It had nothing to do with any of that. I left a domestic violence situation. It’s often not what people think, of how we get there and how it happens (homelessness).”
Volunteers share their insights.
Camille Jones began volunteering for the PIT last year. “I’ve always seen people on the streets and wished that I could do something, and I have always wanted to contribute to my community,” said Jones with conviction. She witnessed people in her life become homeless and felt helpless. The PIT count has been a chance to give back and make a difference.
She says there are more families who are homeless, as well as children, than people realize. “There is a misconception, or maybe something that people don’t think about, ‘There are no homeless here in Prineville, because I don’t see them,’ and that is not the case at all. They are trying to be under the radar, because it can be dangerous for them.”
Jeannie Coyle moved to Crook County approximately seven years ago. She had never had experience volunteering, but she wanted to get involved in the community and signed up for the PIT count. She and her husband, David, wanted to learn more about homelessness. She came from the corporate world and likes systems and processes. “I didn’t know how hard it would be, or how much time it would take,” she exclaimed. She was part of a three-person team and is thankful to be giving back to her community. “There are many, many different kinds of people, not only different ages, but different sexes and different situations. Each is a story, and all the stories are very complicated.”
Jones said there are more families in the outlying areas than people realize. “We forget that unhoused people are people just like us. We need friends and family and people around us in our times of need, so why would an unhoused person not need that as well.”
Danna McNeese represents the Sisters community in the PIT count and said that last year was her first year being involved in the count. “What I learned between 2024 and 2025 is that the organizational level — I think COIC organized it last year as well — and that focal point for an organization and selecting team leaders, really made everything more effective. Some of the meetings that we had for how to organize how people manage their count, whether they did hard copy or online, all of that feedback was helpful to get better this year.”
She added that in 2023/2024, the count for Sisters was 76, and last year’s count was 126. McNeese attributed the increase to being more organized. “That was really interesting. The Deschutes County Behavioral Health outreach person thought that we had probably missed about 25% of the population.”
McNeese also had a Forest Service liaison who tracks people for prescribed burns. “He knows what is going on in the forest,” said McNeese. “He was a main part of our count this year.” He divided the forest into three quadrants for each of their teams.
McNeese said that one of the biggest misconceptions she hears is that people assume homeless folks are all addicts and suffering from mental health needs.
“That category of person is probably 20% of the unhoused population in Sisters. But that 20% has a big impact on public perception.”
Coyle feels that people make assumptions. “One is, ‘these are people who can’t or won’t work hard, and they are not as smart as they should be.”’ She added, “Anything we can do to chip away at that, to help them understand that situation and its complications, and just unharden their hearts and their biases that are just dismissing all these people. That is really cold-hearted.”
Cumberbatch Corpas concluded, “No one wants to be homeless, or spend 10 years on the streets and not know when they are going to be safe. No one wants to be consistently in that fight or flight scenario. Things happen, and that is why folks who are in the work of social services are doing their best to provide the resources and make sure folks know that we care, and you matter.”
This article appears in the Source February 12, 2026.
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