Volunteers needed to hand out care packages, count homeless in Stanislaus County
Organizers of the annual count of Stanislaus County’s homeless population are asking for volunteers to help in the upcoming count in January.
The count is set for Jan. 23.
The Stanislaus Community System of Care and its predecessors have done these counts since 2005. The system of care is a collection of government agencies, faith-based groups, nonprofits and others who help homeless people.
The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development mandates these counts for groups that apply for HUD homelessness funding. These point in time counts are conducted in communities across the nation in January.
Last year’s count tallied a record 1,923 homeless people throughout Stanislaus County and its cities, with 1,400 of them in Modesto, the county’s largest city and home to many services. Previous counts have ranged from 1,156 to 1,800 people.
The previous high of 1,800 was set in 2009 during the Great Recession. But last year’s results may reflect that the count was better organized and planned than previous efforts.
Volunteers need to be at least 18 years old and attend a mandatory training. People interested in learning more or in volunteering can go to www.loveourneighbors.org/pit.
Volunteers will ask homeless people to fill out questionnaires and hand out care packages.
The questionnaires have included questions about how long people have been homeless, whether they have a mental illness and-or addiction and the barriers they face in getting help, such as lack of transportation or official identification. The answers help service providers shape the assistance they provide homeless people.
The counts are a snapshot of homelessness at a given time and should not be considered definitive. The results are affected by such factors as the weather and the number of volunteers.
But the annual counts raise awareness about homelessness, which is a crisis in many California communities.
There is another accounting of homelessness done annually through what is called the homeless management information system, another HUD mandate. HMIS tracks all of the people who received services annually in a community.
So it includes people whose homelessness may last just weeks to those who have been homeless for many years and those passing through a community to those who have lived there their entire lives. (But the annual point in time counts have consistently shown that the vast majority of homeless people are locals.)
The most recent local HMIS report shows 5,892 people received services throughout Stanislaus County from Oct. 1, 2017, through Sept. 30, 2018.
