Wandering the streets or taking refuge in temporary housing, homeless people populate Westmoreland County.
A count conducted Jan. 25 by the Westmoreland County Coalition on Housing turned up 75 people with no housing or unstable lodging.
"We found three couples and seven other individuals," said Bill Connolly, program coordinator for Westmoreland Human Opportunities' Next Step Supportive Housing.
Street and shelter counts were conducted throughout the state on Jan. 25. Each state is required to do so by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development for funding eligibility through the McKinney/Vento Homeless Assistance Program.
Information collected locally is sent to Harrisburg, where the numbers gathered from throughout the state are compiled.
In Westmoreland County, another 62 people were living in the agency's transitional housing the night of Jan. 25.
The total did not include people housed in county shelters.
That number was approximately 30 on Jan. 25, according to a poll of county shelters.
Union Mission, of Latrobe, had nine out of its 10 beds filled on Jan. 25 and annually gives temporary housing to 100-125 men.
The Blackburn Center in Greensburg had seven people on Jan. 25. The center can accommodate 15 and last year offered temporary shelter to 115 women and 74 children.
Welcome Home in Greensburg had 14 homeless people that evening. In 2006, Welcome Home sheltered 216 men, women and children. The facility has four family rooms and dormitory rooms with five sets of bunk beds for single women.
Calls to the Alle-Kiski Hope Center in Tarentum, Allegheny County, were not returned.
Homeless people found on the region's streets on Jan. 25 included the following: Fayette County, 20; Westmoreland County, 13; Armstrong County, seven; Greene County, two; and one each in Washington, Butler and Indiana counties.
"Those are low percentages," Connolly said. "There are still people out on the streets."
People on shelter waiting lists were not counted that evening, he said, something that might change next year.
Between 8 p.m. and midnight on Jan. 25, Connolly said, about 20 county volunteers visited Greensburg, Latrobe, Jeannette, Monessen and New Kensington, seeking out the homeless in 24-hour businesses and soup kitchens.
"The safety issue was a big thing because of how cold it was that night," Connolly said. "One individual did go to a shelter."
Most of the people they found agreed to take food provided by the Westmoreland County Food Bank and resource pamphlets for area services.
"A lot of it is education," Connolly said.
Previous counts, he said, did not reveal many homeless people on the streets.
"We are finding people, which is different," Connolly said.
He said a homeless family occasionally is found sleeping in the WHO parking lot and, though they are assisted, they are not included in the single-night regional count.
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