It figured that Rena Cayou’s persnickety space heater would pick Tuesday morning’s darkest, most frigid hour to spark and sputter until it was a useless lump of metal. She gathered her belongings and walked to the nearest convenience store where she thought she fixed the cranky thing. When she returned to her original spot in the hidden carport of an abandoned Englewood business, she borrowed an outdoor electrical outlet, fired the heater up and again it blew.

It’s often the way the world works for Cayou, a three-year veteran of homelessness.

“It’s like no one cares. It’s terrible and it’s freezing and the po-po run you off,” said the 53 year-old member of the Omaha Nation. “It sucks really bad.”

Cayou was one of thousands of homeless people from the seven-county Denver metro area who participated in this week’s annual Point in Time (PIT) national survey.

The PIT count, organized by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, is an annual rundown of homeless people in both sheltered and unsheltered settings.

HUD requires the count on one evening into morning in the last 10 days of January each year to get an idea of how many people are on the street on a given night. The numbers help HUD make regional funding decisions.

“Keep in mind this is just a snapshot. We could come out tomorrow and see twice as many people as we did today,” said Cameron Shropshire, Arapahoe County’s Housing and Homeless Program Manager, who was up at 4 a.m. assessing the frozen street situation but saw very few homeless outside.

After the initial count is over, homeless people are asked to take a survey, which include questions about various issues they face and how they live. Their answers give policymakers insight into how to eradicate the problem.

In Arapahoe County, the homeless are surveyed in shelters and in unsheltered areas by volunteers and shelter staff members.

After a horrible night, Cayou, looking tired yet relieved, sat down to relax at Englewood’s Giving Heart Day Shelter on South Broadway. She postponed the hamburger and baked bean lunch being served at an open window to take the PIT survey.

To the multiple choice question: “Where did you spend Monday night, January 30^th?” she checked off the answer, “Tent/improvised structure.”

“Is this the first time you’ve been homeless?”

“No.”

One question asked why she didn’t use any type of shelter services.

“No availability,” she answered.

Arapahoe County has two hotels where the homeless can stay for the price of $65-$70, depending on how many are in the room. The vouchers are often arranged by the Homeless Action Awareness Task Force, which raises money for the rooms through donations and grants.

The homeless stay in churches, in their cars, at bus stops or in tents. In Arapahoe County, the South Platte river and parts of the Highline Canal are common spots to camp, according to Shropshire.

People who work in the unending job of housing the homeless bemoan the fact that there is only one shelter in all of Arapahoe County — the Comitis Crisis Center in Aurora.

“Many suburban areas don’t have shelters because county commissioners don’t want to admit that there a problem in their area,” said Shauna Whitworth, Arapahoe County’s Housing Resource Navigator. “It’s getting worse because landlords are pricing people out, especially seniors.”

She said that rents for a one-bedroom apartment in Arapahoe County are around $1,200 per month, which doesn’t cut it when “people on disability only receive $841 per month on average.”  

On Tuesday, Giving Heart — Englewood’s day shelter — was filled with homeless people who used computers set up there for them to apply for jobs or funding assistance. Some sat in the dining room with a cup of hot coffee brewing in a huge percolator. Veterans, elderly, families, singles and couples.

Shirley and Steven Burns met at a food bank where she said he saved her a whole turkey.

“We ate on that for a week,” said Shirley.

Both 63 years old, the Burns share a house now. They also volunteer, driving the streets looking to help people who are stuck, the way they used to be.

“Hey newslady! Tell ‘em we need hats and gloves,” Shirley said. “And socks.” 

In Arapahoe County, the homeless are surveyed in shelters and also in unsheltered areas but Denver does the count differently.

Its program sends teams to select geographic areas to outreach in addition to asking its homeless residents the standard survey questions.

At 4 a.m. on Tuesday, 20 teams of two people, plus park rangers, scoured Denver’s streets, observing tents and vehicles where people were spending the night.

“The survey approach only measures for people who have a service connection and I didn’t want to risk anyone falling through the cracks,” said Chris Conner, Director of Denver’s Homelessness System Strategies.

He said he saw a man walking down the street with a blanket around him before the sun came up.

“We saw folks outside but we saw more come inside. We want to cover every alley and every acre in the city,” he said.

Denver is in the second year of a five year plan to reduce homelessness by 50%. Conner said the solution is “housing, housing, housing” stressing different and better approaches.

Colorado’s biggest cities — metro Denver, in particular — have struggled to address homelessness, even as state and local governments have poured significant resources into tackling the crisis, which has occupied front and center of the debate on the floors of the state Capitol and in halls of city councils.

The city of Aurora, for example, recently decided to overhaul its homelessness reduction system after a divided council approved a proposal that calls for a new campus, incentivizes people’s participation in supportive services and incorporates conditions people must meet to receive transitional housing. City staff have projected building a campus on city-owned land could cost between $50 million and $70 million.

The city of Denver, meanwhile, earmarked $254 million in its 2023 budget toward homelessness.

The Point in Time national count has been criticized because it is never exact.

Last year’s PIT tally showed 514 people were homeless in Arapahoe County, 320 of whom were in a shelter and the remaining 194 sleeping on the street or “another place not meant for human habitation.”

In all seven counties — Denver, Aurora, Arapahoe, Boulder, Broomfield, Douglas, Jefferson and the city of Aurora —  there were 6,884 homeless people on the Point in Time count. Of the total, 4,806 were sheltered and 2,078 were unsheltered. About a third of the total were homeless for the first time.

The 2022 number rose compared to 5,530 in 2021. Most of the homeless people were male.

“It’s not perfect,” said Donna Zimmermon, Executive Director of Giving Heart Day Shelter. “It’s a rough estimate. There are probably people hunkered down out there who don’t want to be counted and the last thing they want is to answer survey questions. But this is a great effort.”

She is proud of the fact that Giving Heart has an entire room ready to install showers, washers and dryers, once money to buy them comes in.

“Those are things the homeless need that the rest of us take for granted,” she said.

Zimmerman said frostbite is a huge problem among the homeless and that she’s spent nights in the emergency room with people who had the tips of their fingers and toes amputated.

“My fingers and my toes are what gets cold. And my face,” said Rena Cayou.

Her plan for the week is to toss the hit-and-miss heater, leave her stuff in a locker provided by Giving Hearts and call in a favor with her family.

“I’m going to swallow my pride,” she said. “Ask them for help.”