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Jefferson County presents homelessness dashboard as cooling center and outreach use rises
Summary
County housing and social services staff updated the Health & Human Services Committee on a new dashboard tracking emergency housing, cooling centers and outreach. Data Jan–Aug 2025 show sustained shelter use, rising cooling-center utilization and dozens of individuals engaged by street outreach teams.
County housing staff presented a new homelessness data dashboard and summer program update to the Jefferson County Health & Human Services Committee, saying the tool will help measure use of cooling centers, emergency placements and street outreach and guide future planning.
Jillian Ritter, director of housing, and Karen Markham, RDSS commissioner, told the committee the dashboard aggregates service data for the county's emergency housing programs from Jan. 1 through Aug. 31, 2025. Ritter said the Salvation Army's overnight capacity was used about 65% of nights in May and had risen to about 88% by late September; New Life Christian Church's daytime cooling center increased from roughly 31% utilization in May to about 62% by September. "We've seen that increase through September as of yesterday. They're at an 88% utilization now," Ritter said of the Salvation Army facility.
The Emmanuel Congregational Church summer meal program grew from roughly 1,900 meals per month in May to more than 2,000 per month by August, the presenters said. County-contracted street outreach teams reported contacts and housing outcomes: the NERCAL-contracted team engaged 94 separate individuals since starting in December, with 15 discharged to permanent housing after a total of 198 contacts; an ACR Health outreach team that began in July engaged 34 individuals to date. Ritter said outreach encounters often require many contacts—she cited one person who had 34 contacts before being housed.
Deputy staff member Dylan (last name not specified) demonstrated portions of the dashboard, showing daily census views for hotel/motel placements, cooling centers and street outreach and a rolling count of "unique individual touch points" across programs in the prior 30 days. Using the dashboard's current definition, staff reported about 150 unique individuals had had at least one program contact in the previous 30 days as of late August. Dylan said the team plans to expand the dashboard to track service pathways and measure how many people move from outreach to shelter to supportive housing.
Ritter and Markham emphasized the dashboard's role in coordinating multiple providers and programs and said street outreach teams visit the three main program locations weekly to meet and follow up with people. No committee action was taken on the presentation; staff said the dashboard is a work in progress and will inform future planning and funding decisions.
