Homelessness across Halifax Regional Municipality in a 24-hour snapshot

Volunteers hit the streets to count the number of people experiencing homelessness in Halifax.

Dozens of volunteers gathered at the Mi’kmaw Native Friendship Centre (MNFC) Wednesday night and Thursday morning, collecting snacks, water bottles and clipboards. Volunteers then set out for encampment sites, city streets and outdoor locations where homeless people are known to stay.

Their efforts are part of the 2025 Homelessness and Housing Needs study that is being coordinated by the Affordable Housing Association of Nova Scotia (AHANS) and the MNFC.

“This is the first year we are doing this annually; it used to be done every second year. We are now doing the numeration or number count every year and then the survey every second year,” said Michael Kabalen, AHANS executive director.

Last year, teams found that 1,132 people across the Halifax Regional Municipality (HRM) were experiencing homelessness.

This year it’s just a count, but last year volunteers asked them a series of 60 questions to gain a better understanding of the demographics, as well as the length of time people have been living without a home and the factors contributing to homelessness.

“Doing the survey every year is a little too cumbersome, but they recognize the benefit of that annual count, so they made the decision starting this year that the count will happen every year and the survey every three,” said Melissa Salah, AHANS reaching homes program team lead.

The study itself is part of the National Point-in-Time Count that’s run in every major community between October and November. Its purpose is to measure homelessness across Canada in a 24-hour period.

“We have volunteers from across the homelessness and housing support sector. Many of them, some of them work in outreach, but some of them are in other areas. So, they are partnering up,” Salah said.

“We also have a group of social work students from Dalhousie University who are helping us out both tonight and tomorrow morning, because this is an overnight street count.”

This is the fifth year the AHANS has coordinated the count in HRM.

Volunteers stopped at locations in areas around Halifax, Dartmouth, Eastern Passage, Cole Harbour, Bedford and Sackville. They also checked rural areas that have been flagged by outreach teams as locations where people experiencing homeless have been known to stay.

“It’s really important that this is done in a trauma-informed way, and so the point for us is that we can get a reliable number so we can report back to the community, the state of homelessness in our community and HRM. So, it is trauma-informed and it’s not about disrupting the person, it’s more about just observing this time,” added Kabalen.

They asked people where they planned to sleep that night and asked follow-up questions based on their response.

“During our first shift of the day, maximizing some daylight hours, we were focusing on suspected and known undesignated encampment locations, so people staying in wooded areas, a little bit out of sight,” said Salah.

“Some are the known locations that you may see around town, but some of them are just wooded areas that have had a history of people camping out, and double-checking those areas to see if they have returned there.”

Two social work students at Dalhousie University, Logan Nickerson and Maeve Hurley, took part in the nighttime shift. They were among the groups tasked with walking the streets of downtown Halifax, looking for people who appeared to be homeless.

“We are trying to approach everyone because we don’t want to profile, but we are also trying to look for someone who may be sleeping on a bench or has all of their belongings, because those are some of the biggest indicators,” explained Nickerson.

When volunteers approached someone they felt could be homeless, they asked them if they had a place to stay that night. Volunteers would then check off a box in a list of possible responses, including:

• hotel
• with a friend or family member
• shelter
• encampment
• the streets

If they responded hospital, treatment centre or jail, they were then asked if they would have access to a permanent residence after leaving that facility.

“We are really trying to make a difference and talking to people and seeing what they need is really important,” said Hurley.

A lot of preparation and work goes into planning and organizing a study of this type. Volunteers had one in-person training day as well as a virtual training session.

Each volunteer was given a number of items, such as maps of the areas they were to cover, as well as name tags and snacks. The teams were paired off with some that had experience and others that were new to it.

“We have a general idea, based on the resources that are being managed in the system, who is where. People interact with shelters, people interact with other resources and there are records that are kept, confidential records that are kept, but we are able to anonymize those and kind of get a general idea,” said Kabalen.

“But there’s people that don’t interact with the system and the count is to observe those folks as well and get a better understanding.”

To ensure accuracy and that people weren’t counted a number of times, volunteers asked people if they had spoken to someone from their team with a clipboard earlier in the day.

Around 15 different organizations helped with the project this year.

“So many of our volunteers tonight, they work in the sector so they, in a lot of cases, are managers adjusting their schedules to give them time to come out with us tonight,” said Salah. “Some of them were on vacation and they were like, ‘No, I’m coming out to help because this is important to me’.”

The AHANS says the purpose of conducting a count annually is to gain knowledge of the number of people who are without a home and take steps forward with government to support them.

“Has that number grown? Has that number gone down? Are there trends that we are unaware of? Are people staying in places or in solutions that haven’t existed, and are those solutions growing? And then help to inform all three levels of government and the community of service providers,” said Kabalen.

One piece of information Kabalen shared about this year’s findings was that more people were found to be sleeping in their cars than last year.

Organizers suspect numbers will be similar to last year, but the official survey results will be released sometime in November.

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