The monumental task of counting the number of homeless in Los Angeles County has been completed, the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority (LAHSA) announced on Monday, Feb. 13.
About 6,066 volunteers, plus employees from several cities and LAHSA staffers fanned out over the county from Jan. 24 through Jan. 26 and some in the weeks after. They counting the unhoused on the streets, outside vacant buildings, in cars, RVs and tent encampments to get a handle on the number of unhoused and their locations.
The data from the unsheltered point-in-time count, as well as the separate youth count from Jan. 22 through Jan. 31 are combined with three months of surveys from a team of demographers at USC to formulate a picture of the county’s homeless population.
The final numbers and maps will be released by LAHSA in late spring or early summer.
The cities of Glendale, Long Beach and Pasadena, which perform their own counts, have finished and soon will release the results in their cities.
Pasadena, with 174 volunteers — more than last year, covered 23 square miles on Jan. 25. “We surveyed every street, alley, nook and cranny in the city,” said Dan Davidson, homeless count coordinator. The city should deliver numbers to the public in May, said Lisa Derderian, city spokesperson.
About 300 volunteers completed the point-in-time count in Long Beach, covering the city of 51 square miles on Jan. 26. The results are expected to be released in April, wrote Chelsey Magallon, city spokesperson, in an emailed response.
LAHSA, and those three independent cities, perform the guesstimates in order to receive annual Continuum of Care Program Competition funding from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. The county and cities within the county use the data to apply for state and federal dollars for shelters, permanent housing, mental health interdiction and substance abuse treatment. A map of unhoused hot spots may help government and nonprofit partners target…
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