Results for the 2025 point-in-time, or PIT, count of residents experiencing homelessness are out for York and Lancaster counties.
Volunteers counted 291 individuals who were experiencing or at risk of homelessness in York County and 95 in Lancaster County when the PIT count was conducted in January, according to the Catawba Area Coalition for the Homeless, or CACH.
CACH announced the numbers Thursday and is expected to release numbers for Chester County next month.
York’s total is a 10% drop from 2024. What that means, however, is hard to nail down, said Melissa Carlyle, CACH’s executive director.
”It's really difficult to know if this represents a true decrease in homelessness in York County,” Carlyle said during CACH’s meeting Thursday. “Maybe we just came into contact with fewer people this year than last year.”
Less ambiguous are the numbers within the numbers. In both York and Lancaster counties, there was an increase in the number of people surveyed who said they were experiencing homelessness for the first time. In York County, 68.5% of respondents said they were first-time homeless; in Lancaster that number was 61%.
York County
Of the 291 people surveyed for PIT, 211 experiencing homelessness were sheltered – staying in shelters or hotel rooms or couch surfing – and 36 were unsheltered. Another 44 were at risk of becoming unhoused.
Two out of three respondents were men and 118 were African-American.
“The majority of people were individuals of color,” Carlyle said. “Homelessness disproportionately impacts people of color. This is something we've seen nationwide, but we see it again and again when we do PIT count surveys as well.”
Sixty-five individuals reported that they had been homeless for at least a year – twice the number who had said they’d been experiencing homelessness for more than 90 days.
While Carlyle said that lingering “systemic inequalities” were to blame for the disproportional rate of Black homelessness, she also said that the number of people experiencing homelessness for the first time and a slight uptick in retirees and people with disabilities who’ve become unhoused can be tied to rising housing costs and not-rising incomes.
“These are folks that are likely on a fixed income,” she said. “For our folks that do have to rent a home, they are seeing increases in their rent but not seeing increases in their fixed income, which makes it really, really difficult for them to remain stably housed.”
According to the Social Security Administration, the monthly payment for a non-blind disability is $1,650. The average apartment in York County, according to data from ApartmentList, was $1,236 per month in January.
Of the 291 individuals surveyed in York County, 146 reported their last address as somewhere in York County. Another 19 reported their last addresses in Lancaster or Chester counties, and 18 reported North Carolina (mostly from Mecklenburg County, which houses Charlotte).
A persistent complaint in Rock Hill, where most homelessness resources in York County are centered, is that homeless individuals are being brought into the city in groups from other places. There were 26 respondents in York County who reported their last address to be in a state other than South or North Carolina.
“It was a lot of one-off states,” Carlyle said. “It's not like we're seeing a mass exodus from one state to our state, of people coming here to experience homelessness. These are just people that relocated from a different area and happen to be experiencing homelessness in York County.”
Carlyle also said the drop in the number of sheltered homeless individuals coincides with the number of people who’ve entered into Rock Hill’s Rapid Rehousing Program.
“This is kind of an example of how these programs work,” she said. “We are transitioning people from the shelters into housing.”
Of all respondents in York County, almost 70% of those experiencing or at risk of experiencing homelessness were either working or actively looking for a job.
Lancaster County
The 95 individuals counted during PIT in Lancaster County is a 23% uptick from 2024. Of those, 36 were unsheltered, the same number as in York Cunty, but a much higher proportion.
That could be partly due to the fact that unlike York County, Lancaster County has very little in the way of shelter. In fact, Lancaster County just opened its warming shelter in December.
Of the 95 surveyed, 29 said they had been experiencing homelessness for a year or longer. That’s 30%, compared to 22% in York County.
About half of respondents in Lancaster County were African-American men and two in three respondents were either working or actively looking for work.
Twenty-two percent of respondents were retired or receiving disability payments. According to Zillow, the average rent for an apartment in Lancaster as of Feb. 3 was $1,633.
The average Social Security payment for retirees is $1,976 per month, according to the SSA.
One notable difference between Lancaster County and York County was the response to what respondents said were the most urgent needs. While housing was the overwhelming first choice in both counties, 15 respondents in Lancaster County said that transportation was a pressing need. In York County, the call for better transportation was almost nonexistent.
Carlyle said this could partly be due to the fact that Lancaster is a more rural county than York, but also that it is evidence that York County residents in the throes of homelessness are utilizing Rock Hill’s free electric bus.
“In Rock Hill, we have the My Ride bus system,” she said. “[In] Lancaster, transportation is more of an issue, even thinking about their warming center. We often ask, ‘How are people getting to the warming center when there's not any public transportation to get people there?’ [It’s] just something to be mindful of when we're talking about more rural communities where public transportation is more of an issue because it's not as easily accessible.”
Three other regional organizations conducted PIT counts in the Midlands, Upstate, and Pee Dee/Grand Strand regions of the state in January. Numbers from those counts are expected to be released in November, after being calculated by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
CACH was able to release data so soon because the agency kept track of PIT data separately.
