Volunteers and county staff are gearing up for this year’s “point in time count,” a massive effort to collect information about Orange County’s unhoused residents that will help officials better understand their needs.
The biennual count is required by the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development, helping determine the number of people who are homeless, but also is being used to collect information on where people gather and more about who they are and their needs, such as how many are families, juveniles, have a disability and such.
On Monday night, Jan. 22, teams of volunteers will begin canvassing people staying in emergency shelters, or other forms of temporary housing. The count of those living on the streets will begin at 4:30 a.m. on Tuesday. The point in time count will continue through Thursday, with teams heading out in the early morning and in the evening. The county, in partnership with nonprofit City Net, is overseeing the count.
This is the third count for which the county is using a new survey-based methodology. The federal agency requires specific categories of information to be collected such as age, gender and race. But the county has created a survey and amasses teams of volunteers who are asked to get answers to the myriad questions as they are doing that basic counting.
The survey was rolled out for the 2019 point in time count. Doug Becht, director of the county’s Office of Care Coordination, said it is more thorough and creates more accurate data.
“Our current methodology is the result of a tally, where previously our number was essentially the answer to an equation we put in after doing some sample surveying and making some assumptions about how to extrapolate,” Becht said. “What we like about the unsheltered count and the methodology that we use, is that at the end of the count, we’re able to identify where all of the folks that we say are experiencing unsheltered homelessness, we can state exactly where we…
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