New numbers are helping put the issue of homelessness into sharper focus.

Let's Count is a night of survey conducted by Lexington's Office of Homelessness Prevention and Intervention.

Each year, the manager of the program says although the number of people experiencing homelessness in the city has increased, he says the data also offers some good news.

Of this year's count, which will have been conducted on the evening of January 31st, found that there were 825 persons that were experiencing homelessness, that would be persons that were residing in emergency shelter, transitional housing or unsheltered locations.

If we look at the 23 results and make a direct comparison to this year, we're going to see an increase of ten persons or just over 1%.

Given that many communities are seeing larger increases, what's positive in that is that our numbers are relatively stable.

We also see that when we look over time.

So if we look back to 2019, just prior to the pandemic, we would have had 787 persons experiencing homelessness on the evening of that count.

So we really haven't seen that significant of an increase.

A new law passed by the Kentucky General Assembly this year could impact those numbers in years to come.

House Bill five, commonly referred to as the SAFER Kentucky Act, bans outdoor camping and public spaces.

Critics of the bill say it criminalizes homelessness.

Many want to know what the relationship between cities, their police and their homeless population is going to look like moving forward.

To be honest, we're still kind of exploring what that would mean for us.

We are working with our law department to review the standard operating procedures that we use to address homeless encampments that are on public controlled property.

And so we should know more in the near future about what that means.

Presently, what our process focuses on is making sure that services that are street outreach are offered to persons who are found to be residing in a publicly controlled space.

And we also will have certain notices that are given to avoid people losing belongings or risking unnecessary law enforcement contact.

So we're just going to really have to look at what kinds of steps in our process might need to be modified and what kinds of additional resources might need to be added so that folks have a quick alternative to residing on the streets.

This year, let's count also found that fewer single adults are experiencing homelessness.

While there has been an increase in the number of unhoused families, which is the inverse of last year's trend.