Before sunrise, volunteer after volunteer filed into the county’s administrative building to check-in for their shift, receiving a green “Everybody Counts” T-shirt and a tote full of snack packs and hygiene bags to hand out to the people living on the street they were tasked with canvassing during Tuesday’s launch of this year’s point in time count.
The biennual count is required by the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development, helping determine the number of people who are homeless and in which communities they are gathering, but also more about who they are and their needs. A display back at the count’s command center showed a live tally of the surveys completed, noting how many youth, seniors and veterans had already been approached.
The count of those living on the streets began at 4:30 a.m. on Tuesday and will continue through Thursday, with teams heading out in the early morning and in the evening. On Monday night, Jan. 22, teams of volunteers canvassed people staying in emergency shelters, or other forms of temporary housing.
Organizers of the count had already pinpointed “hotspots” in the region where unhoused residents are known to gather, information that was put together with the input of local law enforcement and outreach workers. Volunteers were grouped in teams and headed out on Tuesday to zones in central OC –other areas will be canvassed Wednesday and Thursday.
Yolie Negrete, a program supervisor at City Net, led her team of two volunteers through their assigned route in downtown Santa Ana, scanning the streets for unhoused residents.
Some of the people they encountered were bundled up in layers of sweaters, scarves and gloves against the morning’s unforgiving cold, but some only had a small blanket.
All those who agreed to be surveyed were asked, “Were you unhoused on the night of Monday, Jan. 22?”
Abraham, 62, was asleep when one of the team members, Katherine Ibarra, an eligibility tech at the Garden…
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