Reflections from the front lines serving people experiencing homelessness, at the start of a new calendar year, feeling a bit of chill in the daytime air, and reeling from HUD whiplash.
While the year-end holidays bring time off and vacation for many of us, they don’t pause homelessness. The shelter spaces on Key Campus remained full through year end, with a total of over 850 people sheltered nightly in three programs. And Tuesday morning the Keys to Change outreach team counted a total of 585 unsheltered individuals near the Campus and in an expanded radius. If you have been reading and following a long for a while, you may notice that the total number (1,435) does not vary dramatically week to week and month to month.
It’s important to note, though this total number may not vary, it does NOT mean that the people don’t vary. There are people who end their homelessness every day. And there are people who newly fall into homelessness every day. There is a continuous flow of humans with less than 20% experiencing chronic or long-term homelessness. Some are diverted away from homeless services with funding that reunifies them with family, friends, or another support system. Some 850 people enter a shelter program on Key Campus and hundreds more enter other shelter programs in the Valley. Every day people end their homelessness by moving into a variety of subsidized and non-subsidized housing. Unfortunately, the inflow of people into homelessness in our Region continues to be double the rate of the outflow of homeless people into housing, because there is not enough housing available.
The cooler temperatures, 60s during the day and 40s overnight, with about ten hours of daylight, do cause an effect. Even if 60 degrees sounds warm, if you have slept outdoors overnight, Phoenix winter poses risks. A quick internet search warns that at 40 degrees F a human is at risk of hypothermia, a dangerously low core body temperature. Hypothermia may cause confusion, altered mental states, and memory loss. A body working to stay warm will constrict blood vessels which may increase blood pressure and increase the risk of heart attack.
Every time I learn something like this, I realize how easy it can be to judge behavior as “drug induced” or “mental illness.” It’s a reminder to not judge a book by its cover. Maybe what we observe on cold mornings is an effect of the temperature. What could our response be if we viewed this is a possibility? How might we reduce the stigma of homelessness if we considered underlying causes?
As we provide programs and analyze data, as we seek to understand causes of homelessness and human behavior, as we work to retain the current emergency shelter capacity that exists, we also as a homeless response system have been living in a chaotic swirl of notices from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). The whiplash on our organizations is real.
There is not really a succinct way to describe the HUD process that I am referring to… what is happening is similar to other Federal actions we experienced over the course of 2025. A Federal department ignores previously awarded contracts with expenditures authorized by Congress. New processes are launched for funding applications. Lawsuits are filed because the changes are unlawful. Organizations prepare for the new funding process because the monies are needed for essential services. Courts hear cases, issue statements/directives/orders, and we wait for the Federal department to respond. One day an announcement is made. And maybe a week or two later, that announcement is altered or retracted. Due dates are issued by the Courts. And we wait. And we wonder if the government will follow the rule of law.
And we wait.
And we anticipate in this case what might happen if more than one thousand formerly chronically homeless people who have been in permanent supportive housing, often for YEARS, lose that housing. The 1,000+ , that’s in Maricopa County alone. We know that our crisis response system does not have the capacity to receive an inflow of more than 1,000 people.
We look at the amount of funding needed to help these 1,000+ people remain in their housing. And the figures add up quickly to millions, 10 million, 20 million dollars. This amount of money is not available from philanthropy – corporate, family, or private – especially on an annual basis.
And we wait and wonder. And we advocate. And we strategize. And we worry.
And we are still waiting. A January 6 due date was changed to January 8.
And so we wait.
If you want to follow along on this particular HUD process, I highly recommend subscribing to the newsletters of the National Alliance to End Homelessness (visit endhomlessness.org).
What do we need? We need Congress to be adamant that HUD must honor its previous contract commitments, and they must follow the laws of the McKinney-Vento Act and the HEARTH Act. My personal thanks to Congressman Greg Stanton for his vocal, educated, and passionate actions on this topic. It’s impressive to me that he demonstrates from his time on Phoenix City Council, as Phoenix Mayor, and now in Congress, that he understands the homeless crisis response system and the housing choices that are effective and needed. Follow him too on social media.
As I look out on 2026 there are many uncertainties. There is lots of anticipated continued chaos. Yet I know that Keys to Change has an incredibly talented team that will do whatever it takes to end homelessness. And we have a broad, diverse band of partner organizations that share our passion, commitment, and mission. I know that whatever comes at us this year I am surrounded and supported by people who will keep finding ways to serve those experiencing homelessness and who want to continue the long-term work of changing systems to prevent more homelessness and create more housing.
I started writing with the lyrics “leaves are brown and the sky is a hazy shade of winter” in my head. As I often do, I then find the song online and play it on repeat while I’m writing. Tonight, I learned this was not a Bangles song… they remade a Simon and Garfunkel song! And as I’m wrapping up, I’m more focused on the lyrics “But if your hopes should pass away simply pretend that you can build them again.”
We will build again.
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