The railyard at the end of East Locust Street in Newark is expansive and barren, filled with nooks and crannies. It’s dark, empty and out of the way – a less-than-perfect, but available place to lay one’s head when there is seemingly nowhere else to go.
But no one is sleeping here tonight. It’s too close to the town center. Dozens of footprints lead through the snow, finally coming to the opening, revealing nothing. So much nothing. Despite the undeniable shelter it provides, the area under a Rt. 16 overpass and above the railroad tracks is empty – except for Anthony Daniels.
Mud crawls up his shoes even now that he’s on a paved path, and a brisk, cold wind snakes through his two coats as he brings an unlit cigarette to his lips.
Daniels, an unsheltered person in Newark, is helping Alejandra Leon and Mark Louden conduct the annual point-in-time count – or PIT Count – for the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development. The PIT Count, conducted in communities across the country, is a census of unsheltered people collected on one night in January each year.
In Licking County, this happens through the Licking County Coalition for Housing (LCCH). The process, on Tuesday, Jan. 28, was led by Rachel Duck in two teams starting from the Canal Market District just south of the Licking County Courthouse. Duck, Brandi Ringhiser and Doug Price went to Buckeye Lake, while Louden and Leon covered the city of Newark.
The morning after, on Wednesday, Jan. 29, the LCCH called shelters across Licking County to get an accurate picture of how many people sought emergency shelter that night. Final census data will be compiled over the next few months.
Leon and Louden were speaking to Daniels in a clearing near the railroad tracks next to Everett Avenue east of downtown Newark, where once there were dozens of tents, interconnected and even padded by carpeting put down on the ground in a small stand of trees. Now only the tire tracks and footsteps of the people who used to shelter there remain.
They ask Daniels questions about where he planned to sleep that night, his gender, race and ethnicity, whether he ever served in the U.S. Armed Forces, how long he has slept outside, or if he has any chronic health issues, among other questions.
The whole interview process takes a little more than 4 minutes, with 19 questions, some including sub-clauses.
“HUD likes winter because people literally have nowhere to go if they’re out in the cold,” Duck said.
That means more unsheltered people are likely to stay in a shelter than outside – making them easier to find, easier to count, and easier to interview for the PIT process.
Following the adoption in October of Ordinance 24-36, which created misdemeanor charges punishable by fines and jail time for people found guilty of camping on public property, unhoused people in Newark seem to have scattered from downtown and into more remote areas.
Read more: Newark City Council approves ordinance targeting homeless people in 7-1 vote for ‘camping ban’
In addition to the ordinance, Newark officials said they are actively working to develop a “home” court within the Licking County Municipal Court to hear criminal cases that arise because of such laws, and to create a “diversion” option for anyone who is cited under the camping-ban laws.
Diversion programs offer a sentencing option for judges hearing such cases. A judge can offer a defendant the opportunity to go through a diversion program – a series of training programs and services designed to help the person get back on track toward stability. If the defendant agrees to the rules of the program and successfully completes it, the judge can release that person from the program with no criminal record.
But since the ordinance passed, unsheltered people in and around Newark say they’re doing what they can to stay under the radar outside of city limits.
“I gotta watch what I’m doing much, who I’m around,” said Walter McKeithen, 43, an unhoused man in Newark. “Normally, the police are basically watching everybody. I’m shocked now they ain’t even driving down the bike path, they drive down, and up, and down, making sure ain’t nobody put up no tent, ain’t nobody laying down here or up under the bridges.”
Louden and Leon say that LCCH were expecting to count a lower number of unsheltered people in Newark this year. While conducting their survey, they interviewed just six people Tuesday night.
“We’ve known for the past few months about people being run out of their encampments and going back deeper [in the woods] or going elsewhere,” Louden said. “So the lack of finding people today, no, I’m not [surprised].”
In 2024, the PIT count survey showed an estimated 176 people in Licking County were homeless on any given night. That’s a 52% jump from 2023, when estimates showed about 116 people were homeless.
But that data is a best estimate, and the actual number of unsheltered people in Licking County could actually be higher.
According to Louden, HUD only allows the count to take place in specific areas, which has the potential to skew the results. The teams are given fixed routes that they are allowed to follow, which may only be a small section of a road or railway track.
“They give us a map, sometimes the map is near places where we know there are people but we can’t go outside that area, it doesn’t get counted,” said Louden. “We have no idea how they [those areas] are decided.”
Throughout the count, each team approaches unhoused people, reads the given script and asks them questions. There was no question 11. The teams were given a guidance package, along with the app, Counting Us, to carry out the count.
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Winter used to make the PIT count an easier process. Counters could follow footprints through the snow until they came to tents. This year the footprints just keep on walking.
This is a stark contrast to 2024’s Point in Time count, according to Louden and Leon.
“Honestly, if this was last year, there’d be people walking up and down Main Street all the time, all night long. But since the ordinance has passed, you don’t really see that happening anymore,” said Louden.
“People are staying in different places that are so far back […] or out in the woods really deep,” said Louden.
Unsheltered people in Newark are faced with a choice: move out of the city or risk being reprimanded, fined and, eventually, jailed. No matter which choice they make, each one could affect their quality of life.
Read more: Stay Awake or Go to Jail
“Just the knowledge that if they know they can get a ticket or be taken to jail, why risk it?” said Leon.
But by ‘avoiding the risk’ of jail time, unsheltered people actually face more challenges the further away they move.
“It’s both safer and more dangerous,” said Louden. “You’re safer from law enforcement, but the further out you go, the more you can’t get to resources if you get sick.”
All six people Leon and Louden spoke with were walking. They saw no one in a tent.
At a temperature just shy of freezing, and with the unhoused venturing further from the city limits, Newark’s housing crisis may be less visible, but it remains ever-present.
Noah Fishman and Owen Baker write for TheReportingProject.org, the nonprofit news organization of Denison University’s Journalism program, which is supported by generous donations from readers. Sign up for The Reporting Project newsletter here.