Long Beach looks for a few good counters for homeless census

Long Beach’s Health and Human Services Department has enactment retired the telephone for 250 volunteers to aftermath precise aboriginal connected Jan. 25 and deed the streets to number radical who are homeless.

That’s the day for the 2022 Point successful Time count. City officials committed to an yearly number successful 2019, adjacent though the national Department of Housing and Urban Development lone requires a number each different year.

The number is important due to the fact that it helps find however overmuch wealth the metropolis receives from HUD to wage for services to those without imperishable shelter. Because Long Beach has a abstracted Health Department, alternatively of moving nether Los Angeles County, it gets its ain multi-million-dollar assistance each year.

In fiscal twelvemonth 2020, Long Beach received $9,330,143 for its continuum of attraction stateless services, a Health Department spokesperson said. That fig climbed to $10,008,443 for this fiscal year.

Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority officials and volunteers volition behaviour the county’s yearly stateless number from Jan. 25 to 27.

Both Long Beach and the region got waivers to skip this year’s number due to the fact that of the coronavirus pandemic.

In January 2020, 2,034 radical were classified arsenic homeless, surviving successful shelters oregon connected the streets, successful Long Beach. That was a 7% summation from the 2019 count. The colonisation successful Los Angeles County accrued by 12.7% successful the aforesaid period, to 66,433 people.

The point-in-time number includes some radical successful shelters and those outdoors oregon successful vehicles. A wintertime structure successful Long Beach (but paid for by Los Angeles County) opened Dec. 1 successful West Long Beach, adding 47 structure beds. The structure moved this twelvemonth from the aged North Library backmost to a building, 1718 Hayes Ave., adjacent the Multi-Service Center, 1301 W. 12th St.

That brings the fig of structure beds successful the metropolis to 796, counting some government-owned and nonprofit facilities. City officials grip that portion of the count.

Volunteers, meanwhile, locomotion pre-determined areas of the metropolis successful groups of 3 to 5 people. They are asked to interrogation each idiosyncratic who is stateless that they see, completing a abbreviated survey.

It is an aboriginal greeting telephone — groups stitchery astatine 4:30, 5:15 and 6 a.m. astatine the Multi-Service Center to get their assignments and supplies. The existent canvassing takes 3 to 4 hours.

Volunteers indispensable beryllium 18 years old, amusement impervious of COVID-19 vaccination oregon a antagonistic trial wrong 72 hours of the number and volition beryllium required to deterioration look masks for the duration. An hr of online acquisition besides is required.

“The Homeless Point successful Time Count is an important instrumentality successful allowing the metropolis to amended service radical experiencing homelessness successful Long Beach,” Mayor Robert Garcia said successful a release. “By volunteering, you go portion of the solution.”

People tin registry online astatine bit.ly/3oX3dD5. Information: 562-570-4499 oregon homelessservices@longbeach.gov.

Donations of travel-sized hygiene products, socks and much tin beryllium dropped disconnected astatine the Multi-Service Center. Financial donations should beryllium made to the Mayor’s Fund To End Homelessness done the Long Beach Community Foundation astatine longbeachcf.org/donate/mayors-fund-to-end-homelessness/.

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