How big is California’s homelessness crisis? Inside the massive, statewide effort to find out
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Thousands of volunteers fanned out across California this week, peering down alleyways, into parked cars and along creek beds in a mass effort to count the state’s homeless population.
The federally mandated census, done every two years and dubbed the point-in-time count, serves as the main framework Californians use to understand their state’s homelessness crisis. The data it produces influence everything from allocations of state funding, to local policy decisions, to the way politicians talk about homelessness in campaign speeches.
The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, which requires the counts every other year, compiles the data from across the country into an annual report submitted to Congress. Last year, the department tallied 181,399 unhoused Californians — 28% of the nation’s total homeless population. That’s up nearly 40% from five years ago.
But the counts, despite being mandated by federal law and serving as the basis for any number of decisions on California housing and homelessness policy, rely on unpaid volunteers and are far from an exact science. Different counties in California tally their numbers differently. Some attempt to talk to each person they count, while others use algorithms to estimate how many people live inside each tent and RV. Experts agree the real number is higher than the count.
“It is not a finite count,” said Tamera Kohler, CEO of the Regional Task Force on Homelessness in San Diego County. “It is at a minimum, you know you have this many people. …You’re going to miss some folks. You’re just not going to be able to get in every little area in that period of time.”
Several counties tested out new methods this year in an attempt to improve accuracy. In the last count, Alameda County volunteers were instructed to tally tents and RVs without bothering the people inside. This year, volunteers instead tried to talk to everyone inside those tents and RVs, and get them to answer a 15-minute survey.
Surveying the homeless
The sun hadn’t yet risen Thursday morning when Andrea Zeppa, homeless services regional coordinator at Alameda County Healthcare for the Homeless, led her team down a row of RVs parked along the side of a street in Berkeley. Each volunteer was equipped with a map speckled with red dots that signified known encampments. Bundled up against the early morning chill, they picked around piles of trash as a fluffy cat with a bell on its collar darted back and forth between the vehicles.
“Hello, hello,” Zeppa called softly. “I’m here for the homeless count. Anybody awake?” A generator powering one of the RVs droned in the background.
Across the street, 61-year-old volunteer Deidra Perry met a young woman in a long peasant skirt. who was living in a SUV. As Perry asked her a series of increasingly personal questions about everything from her mental health to her HIV status, the woman revealed a glimpse into her life, and how she ended up on the street. She survived domestic violence, she said, and her post-traumatic stress disorder makes it impossible for her to sleep in a crowded homeless shelter. She sleeps on the streets when she isn't working. At one point she’d had a tent, but it was stolen before she even had a chance to set it up.
As the sky began to lighten and birds started chirping, Perry typed the woman’s answers into an app on her phone. At the end of the interview, Perry handed her a $10 Safeway gift card. The woman thanked her, and Perry moved on.
“They’re tough questions to ask,” Perry said afterward. It was her first time participating in a point-in-time count. “It feels very intrusive.”
Most of the vehicles they approached remained dark and silent. Starting the count before dawn helps ensure people aren’t moving around town and at risk of being counted twice, but it means many people are still sleeping.
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