Perry County officials say homelessness is likely undercounted
Kentucky counted 5,231 people experiencing homelessness in 2024, but Perry County officials say hidden cases in cars, motels and doubled-up housing are slipping past the tally.
In Perry County, homelessness can mean sleeping in a car, moving between relatives’ homes or paying for a motel only when work and cash line up. Those cases can disappear from the count before help reaches them.
Kentucky’s 2024 HUD Point-in-Time Count found 5,231 people experiencing homelessness, an 18% increase from 2023, and Perry County’s local picture is fuller than the formal numbers show. Kentucky’s 2023 fact sheet counted 4,766 people experiencing homelessness statewide, with 31% unsheltered and 69% sheltered, and 1,126 people in families with children.
Perry County has both a high poverty rate and a thin safety net. USAFacts puts 26.8% of the county’s population under the poverty line in 2024, about 7,200 people in 2020-2024 terms. In Hazard, Hazard/Perry County Community Ministries provides Corner Haven Crisis Center, family support and Jarnigan Place transitional housing, making it one of the main places residents turn when housing falls apart. But transitional housing and crisis help do not erase the need for more permanent options, especially when family instability, medical bills, job loss or substance use push people from one short-term arrangement to the next.
Schools are seeing part of the problem that housing counts miss. The Kentucky Department of Education tracks students experiencing homelessness under the McKinney-Vento definition, which includes children and youth without a fixed, regular and adequate nighttime residence. That means Hazard Independent School District and Perry County School District can identify students who are changing addresses or staying with others even when no shelter bed or encampment is visible to a point-in-time count.
Summer 2022 flooding in Perry County destroyed countless homes, two schools and many community spaces, damage that rippled through Hazard and surrounding neighborhoods. In a region where housing stock is already limited, that kind of loss can turn a temporary crisis into long-term instability.
Adrienne Bush, executive director of the Homeless and Housing Coalition of Kentucky, told a Kentucky legislative committee in 2019 that the number of people literally homeless on the street or fleeing domestic violence had decreased statewide from 2014 to 2018.
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