Counting the homeless: Local agencies canvass the county for new survey

By: DAVID FRIED - Staff Writer | Friday, April 28, 2006 10:58 PM PDT ∞

NORTH COUNTY ----- Josh Olson cruised down South Escondido Boulevard shortly after dawn Friday, scanning the sidewalks and alleyways for the homeless.

As he spotted one man in a hooded sweat shirt, sleeping bag in tow, Olson, whose Open Arms Ministry works with transients in Grape Day Park, turned his head to look out the side window and counted off his first of the dozen men and women he encountered on his 90-minute hunt.

"There's Dan," said Olson, one of about 75 volunteers who fanned out across every city in the region Friday morning to add up how many people sleep on San Diego County's streets.

The San Diego Regional Task Force on the Homeless, which organized the count, plans to use the final tallies along with information provided by local shelters, for a comprehensive report detailing the number and characteristics of the county's homeless.

The report will also incorporate demographic information culled from about 250 surveys completed by homeless individuals Friday.

Local social service agencies and cities use the information from the task force's semiregular report when applying for federal and state grants for their homeless programs.

Executive Director John Thelen said his organization will publish the findings in June. The new document will update a 2004 report that estimated there are 9,600 homeless individuals in the county at any given time. Approximately one-third of those reside in North County, according to the task force.

But this will be the first time the report will rely on actual head counts performed at the same time across the county. Previous editions of the report used information from local police departments and social service agencies.

Of course whenever one tries to count everyone, some people are bound to get overlooked.

"There will always be a handful who are missed," Thelen said. "But then there will always be a handful who are double-counted."

Annual counts have become a regular practice in many metropolitan areas, including Los Angeles and New York. In some instances, the counts have yielded criticism from some homeless advocates for producing smaller numbers than previous estimates.

Thelen said he expects numbers will change for some cities or groups, such as veterans, farmworkers or seniors, but overall figures will probably remain similar to the 2004 survey.

Tracking down the homeless before they woke up proved no easy task for Olson, one of about two dozen volunteers that canvassed Escondido, Oceanside and other North County cities looking for knapsacks, backpacks and other signs of someone who calls the streets home.

After trudging along the stream beds at Kit Carson Park, he still had not encountered any beddings or other signs of homeless activities.

He cruised back up Escondido Boulevard. One more person. Then by the library. One person.

Olson then made his way to Grape Day Park, a regular hangout for Escondido's homeless. Still early in the day, there were few faces around. He scanned the park area and peeked into the nooks of City Hall, where remnants of homeless activity, including newspapers and a Pez dispenser remained. Nine.

In all, Olson counted a dozen homeless sleeping in public areas in South Escondido and downtown.

The task force's last survey estimated Escondido has roughly 390 homeless people living in shelters and on the streets.

Conducting the surveys was considerably easier, however.

Olson and some of his congregants took advantage of the regular Friday morning prayer meetings they hold in Grape Day Park to explain the double-sided questionnaire that asked for information on everything from participants' medical history and substance abuse to marital status and number of children.

"It helps that we already have a relationship with a lot of these people," Olson said of the half-dozen survey respondents who comfortably gathered atop the blankets the ministry provided.

Those who responded received a $20 gift card to a fast-food restaurant.

But Maureen Barrows, 37, who has drifted on and off Escondido's streets for the last three years, said asking hard questions was the only way social service agencies could really find out how to help the homeless.

"It's not really that personal," Barrows said, explaining to a reporter how she had lost custody of her child because of her struggle with drug addiction and homelessness. "If you can't face who you are, you're not going to get anywhere around here."

Contact staff writer David Fried at (760) 740-5416 or dfried@nctimes.com.

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