A One-night Count, a $1.3 Billion Fight, and What it Means for Richmond

By Courtney Turrin · July 21, 2026 · 6 min read read

Richmond, VA skyline from across the James River — Emmanuel Pezoa

Richmond's Point-in-Time count, a single night snapshot of homelessness, is crucial for securing millions in federal and state funding for housing services.

This week, trained volunteers and shelter staff across the Richmond region will spend a single night doing something simple and difficult, talking to people who don't have a stable place to sleep. It's called the Point-in-Time count, and this cycle carries more weight than most.

What the count actually is

The Point-in-Time count is a one-night regional snapshot of homelessness, conducted twice a year in January and July across the city of Richmond and the counties of Chesterfield, Henrico, Hanover, New Kent, Charles City, Goochland and Powhatan. Homeward, the region's designated planning and coordinating agency, runs it, and has run it since the first Richmond count in 1999, moving to a semiannual schedule in 2007.

Volunteers and homeless services staff go into shelters, transitional housing programs and domestic violence shelters on the night of the count, and conduct street outreach in the early morning hours immediately afterward to find people who spent the night outside, in cars, in encampments or in tents. Staff verbally administer surveys to unsheltered people who agree to take them; starting in 2024, outreach providers began coordinating survey times and locations so that people who decline the survey can still be counted. In the outlying counties, staff also call local Departments of Social Services to ask whether anyone in their jurisdiction is known to be experiencing homelessness.

It is not a comprehensive census of housing instability. The federal definition used for the count, drawn from the 2009 HEARTH Act, does not include people who are staying with family or friends or living in hotels or motels on their own, only those in shelters or literally unsheltered. It is, deliberately, a narrower question than the full scope of housing instability in the region: who is in a shelter or on the street tonight.

The January 2026 count illustrates that constraint well. Extreme weather prevented an official count of unsheltered homelessness that cycle, though the sheltered portion of the count still went forward as planned. Homeward's own summary of that data notes that people counted in the region's additional seasonal and overflow shelters that winter would likely have been unsheltered without that capacity, a reminder that the final number resulting from the count is a floor, not a ceiling.

Why a single night's number matters

The count isn't an academic exercise. Data from the Point-in-Time count is submitted to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and included in an annual report on homelessness reviewed by Congress during budget appropriations. Participation in the count is also a requirement for state funding through the Virginia Homeless Solutions Program. In practical terms, a region's numbers help determine whether it qualifies for the federal and state dollars that fund shelters, rapid rehousing and permanent supportive housing.

The January 2026 snapshot gives a sense of scale. Homeward's Greater Richmond Continuum of Care counted 618 people total that cycle, 363 in year-round shelters and 255 in seasonal and overflow shelters. Between July 1 and December 31, 2025, 5,538 individuals were served by agencies in the Continuum of Care through triage, street outreach, emergency shelter, transitional housing, rapid rehousing and permanent supportive housing. Of people surveyed at that January count, 47% cited economic factors, primarily eviction, housing costs and job loss, as the primary cause of their homelessness, 18% cited family breakdown, 10% cited behavioral health, and 25% cited other causes.

A model other communities look to

Homeward's coordinated approach has earned it a reputation beyond Richmond. In 2023, WTVR quoted Homeward describing the region's system as nationally recognized as a model for delivering homeless services, a characterization Homeward's own history page echoes, calling itself an active participant in the national network of partners to reduce homelessness and considered a model by other communities.

What the region points to specifically is a single point of entry into services rather than a maze of separate providers, a coordinated system that shares data across agencies, and a structure that spans urban Richmond alongside suburban and rural counties in one collaborative network. Most Richmonders have never heard of any of it, despite depending on the region having it in place.

Why this count lands at a harder moment

This year's count arrives in the middle of a live fight over the federal funding that regions like Richmond depend on.

HUD opened its FY2026 Continuum of Care funding competition on June 1, allocating $4.04 billion nationally, including a $1.3 billion set-aside for new transitional housing and supportive services projects. Virginia's Office of the Attorney General describes that set-aside as functioning as a de facto cap on funding for permanent housing. The Greater Richmond region secured over $9.3 million in federal funds through this same program in the prior cycle.

This federal fight will reshape Richmond's funding in a specific way. It moves money away from rapid rehousing, a model that gets people into permanent housing quickly and cost-effectively, and toward transitional housing, which costs more per household and serves fewer people overall.

On July 2, 2026, Virginia joined a coalition of 20 other states, along with the governors of Kentucky and Pennsylvania, in suing HUD over the new funding conditions. Virginia Attorney General Jay Jones said the new funding notice amounts to a move that would result in tens of thousands of people losing their homes. Nationally, the National Alliance to End Homelessness estimates the shift threatens housing for at least 97,000 residents of Continuum of Care-funded permanent housing programs.

This isn't the first time this fight has happened, and the earlier round didn't go HUD's way. A federal court ruled that the conditions HUD placed on FY2025 Continuum of Care funding violated the Administrative Procedure Act and could not be implemented, a case brought by a similar coalition of state attorneys general. The FY2026 suit tests whether this year's version of the same conditions survives the same scrutiny, and as of publication, it remains unresolved.

The pattern of federal funding shifts isn't limited to housing. Attorney General Jones's office also secured a preliminary injunction this year blocking new federal conditions on funding for the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program (SNAP) and Women, Infants and Children (WIC) program, after Virginia and other states challenged those conditions in court. A different federal agency ended up in the same fight. New conditions get attached to established funding, states sue as a coalition, and so far the conditions have lost more often than they've held up in court.

But the number that comes out of it lands in a funding environment more contested than it's been in years. That makes an accurate count, and a fully resourced Continuum of Care, matter.

How to help

What Homeward needs from the community is straightforward: volunteers, support and public awareness of a system many in the Greater Richmond region benefit from without knowing it exists. Anyone looking to get involved can start at Homeward's partner page.

Disclosure: the author is a board member at Homeward, effective 2025.