On a cold, clear morning by the railroad tracks south of downtown San Jose, a workforce of case managers in grey hoodies approached Raul Flores, who’d spent the evening earlier than on the road a couple of blocks away.
“Are you hungry?” certainly one of them requested.
In change for answering a couple of questions — did he have any well being circumstances, had he not too long ago stayed at a shelter, how he grew to become homeless — they provided Flores a $10 McDonald’s present card. He fortunately agreed.
“If I was able to work, I wouldn’t be out here,” the 44-year-old San Jose native defined.
Flores took half Thursday in Santa Clara County’s every-two-year homeless depend, which seeks to tally everybody residing in tents, vehicles or different locations not meant for habitation, in addition to in homeless shelters.
The federally mandated “point-in-time” census, carried out over two days this week, will assist decide public funding for native homelessness applications. It additionally collected demographic and different survey information that officers say is essential to informing their homelessness response.
“It’s one data set that helps provide valuable information about people experiencing homelessness,” mentioned KJ Kaminski, head of the county’s Workplace of Supportive Housing, its lead homelessness company.
Subsequent week, Contra Costa, Sonoma and Napa counties may even conduct homeless counts. Preliminary outcomes are anticipated to be launched within the spring or summer time. The Bay Space’s different 5 counties will take their estimates subsequent 12 months.
The counts come because the Bay Space’s estimated homeless inhabitants soared 46% over the previous decade to a report 38,891 final 12 months, regardless of unprecedented billions spent to deliver individuals off the streets. The surveys have discovered individuals of shade, members of the LGBTQ+ group and different marginalized teams are sometimes overrepresented in native unhoused populations.
Specialists and advocates say that whereas medicine and psychological well being challenges are vital drivers of homelessness, the disaster will persist throughout the area till it could possibly add extra inexpensive housing and discover methods to ease the burden of rising housing prices on its low-income residents.
“We need to make those robust investments to make sure people aren’t falling into homelessness at the rate they currently are,” mentioned Alex Visotzky, senior California coverage fellow with the Nationwide Alliance to Finish Homelessness.
No less than each two years, counties nationwide ship groups of volunteers and outreach employees to depend the variety of homeless residents of their communities over one or two mornings in January. The aim is to depend unhoused individuals after they’re sleeping or much less more likely to be transferring from place to position. Nonetheless, there’s widespread settlement the efforts typically yield an undercount, partly as a result of some encampments could be arduous to identify, and it’s usually tough to estimate the variety of individuals residing in tents or automobiles.
To make sure its depend is as correct as potential, Santa Clara County used a brand new app for volunteers and outreach workers to log their tallies in actual time and centered extra groups in areas the place homeless individuals have been most probably to be staying.
“We think it will improve the accuracy and gather even more information from people experiencing homelessness,” Kaminski mentioned.
In 2023, the county recognized 9,903 homeless individuals. That was a 1% dip from the earlier depend however the largest homeless inhabitants within the Bay Space.
After COVID-19 paused all homelessness counts in 2021, Santa Clara County, in an effort to raised perceive the affect of expiring eviction moratoriums and different emergency applications, counted in each 2022 and 2023 and now counts solely throughout odd years. In the meantime, Alameda, San Mateo, San Francisco, Marin and Solano resumed counting in even years. Contra Costa, Sonoma and Napa now depend yearly.
County officers mentioned that though they depend on completely different schedules, the estimates occur ceaselessly sufficient to supply a helpful snapshot of homelessness throughout the area. All Bay Space counties additionally conduct a yearly depend of homeless individuals in shelters.
In an announcement, the Contra Costa County well being division mentioned that whereas it counts extra usually than some counties to raised assess its applications and insurance policies, “collaboration and data-sharing across counties ensure that efforts remain aligned.”
In San Jose, Flores completed up his survey interview and pocketed the McDonald’s present card. He informed a reporter that he can’t discover regular work due to a mix-up together with his social safety quantity. He mentioned he was unwilling to remain at a bunch shelter close by as a result of he wouldn’t have the ability to deliver all of his belongings.
Requested what he would purchase with the present card, Flores replied, “I’m gonna save it — for when I really get hungry.”
Initially Printed: January 23, 2025 at 2:55 PM PST
