One topic during the class discussions and guest speakers that truly held an impression on me was the cost of Point-in-Time Counts. Point-in-Time (PIT) Counts are done every two years throughout every county, typically during the last week of January. PITs are unfunded mandates that find multiple sponsors to fund the expenses, the time, and the quality of the count itself and require hundreds of volunteers to participate. The range of cost for a PIT count could be all the way up to a million. For example, the PIT count for Los Angeles count is approximately 600,000 dollars. My big question is does the expenses to conduct a PIT count outweigh the amount of money that is received towards services for the homeless? What if the 600,000 dollars was directly contributed to services and shelter for the homeless community instead of being donated to a middle-man type of service? PIT counts do provide useful and effective information about the homeless community but the fact that the amount of money received for the community does not directly tie to the number of people counted during the PIT does make me wonder. One reason I believe PIT counts do actually benefit the community is the process does prove a correlation between the number of homeless individuals to the effectiveness of the services being provided. If the amount of homeless individuals are declining, thus can prove the services are actually having a benefit to society.