The annual San Antonio/Bexar County Point in Time Count of the Homeless is taking place Thursday.
Dianne Talbert with the South Alamo Regional Alliance for the Homeless says hundreds of volunteers will be surveying the homeless and doing demographic counts.
“HUD (the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development) requires us to do this count once a year. We identify demographic information to them and that is in support of the funding that they provide for us for shelter and homeless services,” said Talbert.
During last year’s count, there were a total of 1,970 sheltered (people who stay in places like emergency shelters and temporary or transitional housing projects) and 922 unsheltered (those who sleep in parks, cars, abandoned lots etc.) homeless people.
A third category, one that is often tougher to tabulate, is that of the chronically homeless — individuals with disability, or part of a family in which the head of the household has a disability, and have either been continuously homeless for at least 12 months or homeless for four separate periods over the last three years.
You can volunteer for the count on Haven For Hope’s website. http://www.havenforhope.org/new/events/pointintimecount2015.aspx
