East San Gabriel Valley Homeless Count

The Institute for Urban Research and Development, in collaboration with the City of Covina and the East San Gabriel Valley Consortium on Homelessness, will conduct a street-based and service-based one-day point-in-time citywide enumeration of homeless persons as defined by HUD that includes a methodology that creates an identifier (described below) that will avoid duplication of homeless persons during the enumeration process.

The street-based enumeration will include homeless encampments and other places that homeless people use as part of their daily activities. Homeless encampments are those places that homeless people use primarily for sleeping. Other places (non-encampments) include streets and sidewalks where homeless people are usually en route, or who may be in vacant lots, parks, school yards, parked cars, abandoned buildings, and other locations that are not homeless encampments.

Service-based enumeration will include those places where homeless persons receive services. Such places would include shelters, transitional housing programs, food and clothing programs, etc.

Persons that will be counted within the street-based and service-based enumeration will be those individuals and family that are considered homeless according to HUD's definition of homelessness. The most current definition being used by HUD can be found within the 2002 Continuum of Care NOFA. It is as follows:

"A person is considered homeless only when he/she resides in one of the places described below:

a. in places not meant for human habitation, such as cars, parks, sidewalks, and abandoned buildings;

b. in an emergency shelter;

c. in transitional or supportive housing for homeless persons who originally came from the streets or emergency shelter;

d. in any of the above places but is spending a short time (up to 30 consecutive days) in a hospital or other institution;

e. is being evicted within a week from a private dwelling unit and no subsequent residence has been identified and the person lacks the resources and support networks needed to obtain housing; or

f. is being discharged within a week from an institution in which the person has been a resident for more than 30 consecutive days and no subsequent residence has been identified and he/she lacks the resources and support networks needed to obtain housing.

The methodology that will be implemented during the enumeration process includes the creation of an identifier that prevents a person from being counted more than once. During the enumeration, counters would record the initials, gender, ethnicity, and year of birth of each individual homeless person. This information will then be used to code each person. For example, a homeless person may have the following code of "WTMW1957. This means that this person's first name began with "W", his last name began with "T", he was male "M", he was White "W" and born in 1957.

Thus, the coding method will be used in order to prevent duplication. If the same person was encountered again counters would establish the same code. However, this person would only be counted once in the final tally.

The instrument that will be used can be found on this web site. The instrument includes the following columns of information: first initial of first name, first initial of last name, gender, ethnicity, and year born. This information for every person every time would be loaded into a data base. An example including information about 10 persons is as follows:

Numbers 6 and 7 (shaded in gray) would be considered the same person. Therefore, the person would only be counted once in the final tally that would answer the question "how many homeless persons are there in Long Beach during a given day." If for some reason there was doubt that numbers 6 and 7 were the same person, other collected data could be used to address the doubt.

On the designated day of the count there will be three primary methods of contact with homeless persons. They will be: i) street-counter contact; ii) van-rover-counter contact; and iii) homeless program-counter contact.

Street-Counter Contact

On the day of the count, a pre-determined number of street-counter teams of three persons: a team leader who is currently homeless or formerly homeless, a social service provider, and a community volunteer will conduct a head count. Each team will be assigned to visit a certain number of pre-identified homeless encampments that will ensure that each encampment will be visited only once and that all encampments will be visited by a team.

Van Rover Contact

Homeless Program Contact Teams

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