Winter Homeless Shelters Already Seeing ‘Significant’Number of Families in Hampton Roads
November 18, 2022. As the weather grows colder, annual winter homeless shelters are commencing operations, and the need is already exceeding expectations.
The Planning Council collected and supplied data showing the increased need to date. The PORT Winter Shelter and the A Night’s Welcome Winter Shelter have already seen an unusually high number of families seeking refuge this season, according to their directors.
Families made up 35% of the homeless population in the point-in-time count this year across the six jurisdictions of the Greater Virginia Peninsula Homelessness Consortium, while the number of homeless families in the Southeastern Virginia Homeless Coalition region and Portsmouth counted in the census was up from 38 to 54 and 14 to 18 in the count from 2021 and 2022, according to the group reports. In Virginia Beach, the most recent point-in-time count found 352 homeless people across 246 households.