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Committee asks for clearer data and citations for H.91 findings, requests PIT and hotel death numbers
Summary
During markup of H.91, committee members pressed staff to add specific source citations to the bill's findings, requested Point-in-Time (PIT) count details on unsheltered homelessness and a recent count of deaths in hotel placements, and discussed adding a finding linking health conditions to housing precarity.
Committee members reviewing draft language for H.91 asked staff to make the bill's factual "findings" more explicit about source data and to add several specific data points.
Katie, staff member, told the committee she had been forwarding public comments and draft edits to members and asked the group where they had left off. Committee members said the findings section contains important data but is inconsistent about source citation. "Can't go wrong with citing your sources," one member said, urging full citations rather than selective notes.
Several members asked for an explicit finding on unsheltered homelessness and pointed to the state's PIT (Point-in-Time) count as a sourced data set. Jubilee, committee member, said the 2024 PIT count recorded 166 people "in shelter," and that the PIT also tracks chronic conditions such as physical disability, developmental disability, severe and persistent mental illness, chronic substance use and other long-term health conditions. Committee members asked staff to collect those PIT breakdowns and add citation language to the draft findings.
Members also requested an accurate count of deaths among people placed in hotels. Monica, staff member, reported she had heard a figure of "29 or 30" from a secretary but could not confirm the time period. Committee members discussed confidentiality limits on cause-of-death data and were told state reporting rules can limit release of small-number data to prevent identification; staff said they would follow up to see what aggregate numbers could be shared.
The group discussed adding a finding that links health needs and disabilities to housing instability. Esme, committee member, urged language reflecting the intersection of health problems and homelessness, and Anne, committee member, suggested using established public-health framing such as "social determinants of health" if members could provide source citations. Staff asked members to supply citations so the committee could add a research-backed finding.
Clarifying tasks were assigned: Doug, committee member, was asked to look for state housing-scarcity data; Belize, committee member, volunteered to locate unsheltered homelessness numbers from the PIT survey; and staff were asked to collect any available aggregate hotel-death counts and to cite the PIT dataset consistently across the findings.
Ending: The committee left the findings section with clear follow-up items: add uniform source citations for findings, insert PIT-derived data on unsheltered and sheltered counts and their disability/health-condition breakdowns where available, and attempt to obtain an aggregate hotel-death count consistent with privacy rules.
