Agencies across Wyoming conducted Point in Time (PIT) Counts from Wednesday at sunset to Thursday at sunup. PIT Counts take place across the country during the last ten days of January, mandated by the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).
PIT Counts include a tally of both the number of unsheltered individuals experiencing homelessness and the number of sheltered individuals in places like emergency shelters or transitional housing on a given night. HUD mandates annual sheltered counts and unsheltered counts every other year. Data from the counts is submitted to the agency and is ultimately sent to Congress to determine funding to address the need. During the count, volunteers will ask people questions about where they slept that night.
These counts are coordinated by Continuum of Care Programs (CoCs), which are mandated by HUD in every state, and act as statewide planning bodies to help organize funding and housing services.
“We know there’s probably homeless [people] in every county. It’s just finding them and identifying them,” said Bobbie Nielsen-Rogers, with the Wyoming Continuum of Care. “We try and identify leaders for every county that will take that charge and run with it and try to find those people that are homeless.”
In the 2025 PIT Count, 535 people experiencing homelessness were identified in Wyoming; 437 sheltered, 98 unsheltered.
Nielsen-Rogers said Wyoming’s vast distances between towns or medical care pose a serious challenge for people experiencing homelessness.
“Maybe we have someone who has a housing voucher through one of our housing authorities, but the only place they can find housing is 30, 40 miles away from where their doctor is or the stores are, and they have no transportation,” she explained.
Dawn Cranmore is a PATH Program coordinator with Recover Wyoming in Cheyenne and is the lead for the Laramie County PIT Count. She said about 15 volunteers conducted an unsheltered count across the county until 9 p.m. on Wednesday. They were able to interview 25 individuals and direct them to an annual resource fair the next day.
“I think one of the misconceptions is that people think that people choose to be homeless,” said Cranmore. “People don’t choose to be homeless. Everyone wants to have shelter.”
Josh Watanabe is the executive director of Laramie Interfaith, one of the Albany County organizations involved in this year’s count. Last year, organizers tried an unsheltered count in small groups around the county, but it was unsuccessful.
“We have unsheltered and unhoused folks here in Albany County, but finding them is not the easiest thing,” said Watanabe.
He pointed to the bitter cold on the night of the count last year as a factor.
“They can be hanging out inside truck stops. They can be in bars. They can be with friends. They could be doing a lot of other things to minimize the amount of time that they’re outside,” he said.
Their official number last year was two people, which Watanabe said was a significant undercount. They normally tally between 10 to 12 people.
This year, Albany County organizations like Interfaith, the Laramie Soup Kitchen and Laramie Reproductive Health will be screening people as they come into their facilities. If someone indicates they were unhoused on the night of January 28, volunteers will give them the full HUD survey. Watanabe said, though they tried a traditional nighttime count last year, this has typically been their model.
Nielsen-Rogers said she won’t have a clear idea of how many agencies participated or what approaches different counties took until all the counts are submitted, but both the overnight, on-the-ground count that Laramie County took and the agency approach that Albany County took will be logged for HUD.
January tends to be one of the coldest months of the year – especially in Wyoming – but HUD requires that the count take place some time during the last ten days of that month. Nielsen-Rogers said late January is chosen because the weather is bad, people’s resources are often running low by the end of the month, and shelters tend to be full.
“Doing an unsheltered count – so the people that are not in emergency shelters – gives us an idea of what that picture looks like when people’s resources do run low, of who can’t, hasn’t, obtained shelter,” she said.
Watanabe said that’s when the government thinks people are being forced off the street because of weather, making choices to find roommates or shelter. He thinks this can imply the misguided idea that homelessness is a choice.
“That’s just not true. I think that hurts that population to have that sort of stigma attached to it,” he said. “Certainly, there are a portion of folks that have made that choice. But I think for the majority of folks that are experiencing homelessness, they’re there because that’s what their situation forced them into.”
Nielsen-Rogers echoed the idea that there are many situations that can result in homelessness.
“It can be economic, it can be family problems, it can be domestic violence, it can be substance abuse, mental health, there’s just a gamut of reasons. There’s probably a different reason for every person that experiences homelessness,” she said.
Both Nielsen-Rogers and Watanabe also emphasized that the PIT Count is focused on one night out of the entire year.
“The HUD count is very specific on what actually qualifies as being, or experiencing, homelessness,” Watanabe said. “They can be with friends tonight, and they can be unsheltered the rest of the entire month, and it doesn’t count for the PIT Count.”
Cranmore, Nielsen-Rogers and Watanabe all expressed interest in conducting similar counts in the summer, to assess how the population of people experiencing homelessness in Wyoming fluctuates with seasons.
