Ramsey says last year’s passage of the Safer Kentucky Act, which enacted a statewide street camping ban, has made it harder to locate unsheltered people than in previous years.
The Catholic Action Center’s street survey reports there’s 5.5% percent less people living homeless in Lexington than last year. That comes out to around twenty-nine-hundred people living unsheltered or in temporary housing.
The survey sends teams of volunteers out to interview the unhoused in the span of one day.
Ginny Ramsey is the Catholic Action Center’s executive director. She says the recently passed Safer Kentucky Act, which criminalized street camping statewide, has made it harder to find people eligible to take their survey.
“We have noticed, in the past 15 months, people don't set up camp and stay. In the past, people would almost build their little houses,” Ramsey said. “You know, it would be a true little village with many campers staying together.”
The survey reports 223 people said they’ve been harassed for sleeping outside, accounting for around 30% of those who filled it out. Of that number, 159 incidents were citations or arrests by law enforcement and 64 were from other citizens.
The survey also reports around 200 fewer people are living in transitional housing. Ramsey says that can be a problem with city shelters already full.
“Transitional housing is what is funded mostly by organizations or through the government,” she said. “We don't take federal, state, local funds, but other entities that normally would have had transitional housing didn't have it. So that doesn't come out in the numbers, per se, but we know that’s why.”
City officials say Lexington’s homeless population has risen by more than 30% in the years since COVID-19. A city task force is looking into how to add more shelters to accommodate the rise. Lexington officials there’s currently a 500-bed shortage of homeless shelter housing, and that number is projected to double within the decade.
The city’s emergency winter shelter opens Nov. 1.
The full Catholic Action Center Street Survey can be viewed here.
