Volunteers needed for homeless count
Published 12:42 pm Friday, January 24, 2025
- WDN File photo
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The Homeless Point-in-Time Count is a national count of unsheltered people that occurs one day out of the year. This year it will be held on January 29.
“It helps with funding for agencies that work with the homeless,” said Sally Love, executive director of Safe Harbor and former executive director of the United Way. “Those numbers determine the amount of funding we can receive from the state, which gets its funding from HUD. These resources can then be used to help homeless people find housing. They include things like rapid rehousing, first and last months’ rent, deposits, and those sorts of things. So it is essential to have those numbers.”
Love said, as the title suggests, it is just a point-in-time count, and it doesn’t show a real accurate count as it is based on just that one night.
“We know we will miss a lot of people, but it is a point of reference,” she said.
Love explained that there are three different ways to calculate the count for the night of January 29.
Open Door women’s shelter is part of the Home Information Management System, and the data they enter into the system for that night is automatically counted. Zions Shelter and Soup Kitchen manually counts the number of men in the shelter that night and works to come up with a list of those who may have been provided additional paid shelter that night in a hotel, a church, or someplace like that. And the third group, which is the most difficult to identify, is those who spent that night on the street.
“We have six days following the 29th to try and determine where those individuals spent the night,” said Love. “And this is the area where we need volunteers. We are in the process of disturbing the First Contact for Unsheltered Outreach forms to those who encounter the homeless, such as the Salvation Army, the Health Department, the Department of Social Services, and the food pantry. We will also be handing out information flyers to the 80-plus individuals who come to the Zion Shelter and Soup Kitchen daily before the 29th to let them know about the survey. We will then go back on January 30th, 31st, and February 3rd and 4th to see if they are willing to fill out the forms with us. It is also our hope to have police officers hand other flyers to the homeless they encounter with information on how they can contact us.”
Anyone who wants to volunteer and help with the process of collecting this information is encouraged to call Love at 252-634-8585.