Volunteers Needed to Help Count People Experiencing Homelessness

According to last year’s Point-in-Time Count, there were more than 10,000 people experiencing homelessness in San Diego County.

Help us with this year’s annual Point-in-Time Count, scheduled to take place from 4 a.m. to 8 a.m. and 6:30 p.m. to 9 p.m. on Thursday, Jan. 25. Volunteers are asked to participate in one of the available shifts.

This count helps our region apply for federal and state funding to help serve this vulnerable population and measure our efforts to reduce homelessness.

The annual Point-in-Time Count is our region’s effort to count the number of people experiencing homelessness on a single night of the year—to talk with them, collect information to help understand the scope of the homelessness issues in the region, people’s circumstances and their needs.

You can be part of that effort by volunteering a few hours of your time—paid for and on the clock, thanks to approval by the County Board of Supervisors.

The deadline to sign up is 5 p.m., Monday, Jan. 22. However, employees who receive the OK to take part from their supervisors are encouraged to register as soon as possible because deployment sites fill up quickly. You can review the FAQs and then obtain approval from your supervisor via the supervisor approval form, if you are interested in participating. (The FAQs and supervisor approval form may open in your downloads folder.)

Once you get approval, please sign up here.

After you’ve signed up, you will receive an email receipt for this event. In the email there will be a link to a training for you to review from the Regional Task Force on Homelessness, which is leading the local Point-in-Time Count effort.

Morning shift volunteers are asked to arrive at their deployment locations by 3:45 a.m. to give themselves time to become familiar with a mobile counting app that helps us conduct a more accurate count and receive your count area map.

The 2024 count, as directed by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, will again entail an “engaged” survey-based approach, where people on the streets will be surveyed as they are encountered, rather than just an observational count.

This will be the 10th year that County employees have volunteered to take part in the count. The Regional Task Force on Homelessness reported last year that the 2023 count found 10,264 people experiencing homelessness—a number they said should be considered a minimum—across the county, a 20% increase from the 2022 count.

In the 2023 count, roughly 170 County employees helped and are again encouraged to take part in this important effort. Members of the public can also join the count. If you know family or friends who would like to participate, they can sign up to volunteer.

So, if you’d like to help make a difference in addressing this important issue, please volunteer.