Volunteers to tally Stanislaus County’s homeless

Nearly 100 volunteers will fan out across much of Stanislaus County this week to count and interview the homeless along riverbanks, in parks and soup kitchens, and other places they usually gather.

The count is being conducted on behalf of the Stanislaus Housing & Support Services Collaborative, with members including local governments, nonprofit agencies, churches and others that work with the homeless.

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development requires the collaborative to conduct the count as part of applying for funding from its Supportive Housing Program.

Collaborative members get about $3.3 million annually in SHP funding, which is used for permanent, supportive housing for the chronically homeless, transitional housing for the homeless and for case management services.

These counts are a snapshot of homelessness at a given time and cannot provide a complete picture of homelessness in a community; HUD calls them “point in time” counts. Last year’s count turned up 1,156 homeless people and the 2013 count turned up 1,201 homeless people.

The Housing Authority of the County of Stanislaus is organizing the count. Housing Authority official Michele Gonzales said this year’s count adds Denair, Hughson, Waterford and Hickman to the communities volunteers will canvass.

She added that there will be a special emphasis on counting young people who are homeless, which she said is a group underrepresented in these tallies.

She said the Center for Human Services, which works with young people, has gotten the word out to homeless youths to gather at Modesto’s Graceada Park, where volunteers will count them.

The count starts Wednesday at shelters and concludes Thursday with volunteers counting the homeless in parks, at the library, at agencies that feed the homeless and other locations.

Volunteers also will gather basic information about the homeless, such as how long they have been homeless and where they last lived before becoming homeless. This information helps service providers fine-tune their efforts to help the homeless.

The results of the count are expected no later than April.

This story was originally published January 26, 2015 at 6:08 PM with the headline "Volunteers to tally Stanislaus County’s homeless."