The Coalition for the Homeless of Houston and Harris County released its annual report June 10, which found that 4,609 people are considered homeless in Harris and Fort Bend counties. The coalition estimates 28 people are living without shelter in the Katy area.

This year’s numbers are a 14 percent decrease from the population counts in 2014 and a 46 percent decrease since 2011. Coalition for the Homeless of Houston and Harris County CEO Marilyn Brown attributes the drop to a change in the response system.

“We began the change in early 2012,” Brown said. “Beginning then, we actually moved … towards a specific system process where an agency determined what it did best instead [of] trying to do [all the things] that person would need.”

Instead of one agency trying to help a homeless person through every step of the process, each organization plays to its strength, leaving the other responsibilities to other agencies, Brown said. This new system is known as The Way Home.

“The Way Home is 60-plus agencies that are all sitting around the table for the first time really figuring [out] ways to help each other so that ultimately the client is the one who’s helped,” Brown said.

The system change made it easier to tailer individual approaches to each case, Brown said.

“That way, you’re matching the intense resource to the person who needs intense services and a lighter touch to someone who might just need job retraining,” Brown said.

That same system is implemented on a smaller scale in the Katy area with Tina Hatcher’s nonprofit organization, Hope Impacts, which started in 2014 and is dedicated to fighting homelessness.

“I really have a heart for the homeless,” Hatcher said. “The people [who] need to have a voice for them ... I feel like I can be that for them.”

Hope Impacts oversees efforts between different organizations in Katy that provide homeless services. Those organizations include Clothed by Faith, which donates clothes to those in need, and Christ Clinic, which provides free or low-cost medical care to uninsured patients.

“We help [homeless people] find the best medical plan for their needs, and we usually place [them] back into Christ Clinic because we’re the most flexible [on pricing],” said Kara Hill, executive director of Christ Clinic.

Coordinating the effort to fight homelessness leads to results, Hatcher said. Hope Impacts estimates 12 people have found permanent housing since the organization’s inception.

“Quite frankly, between the work of Hope Impacts and Clothed by Faith and what we do here, we are literally saving people’s lives,” Hill said. “There are people alive today because of the services encountered in Katy.”