Santa Clara County

Santa Clara County to use new technology in biannual homelessness count

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In a few days, cities, counties, and homeless agencies will begin their biannual count to determine the number of unhoused people in their communities. However, the count will be different in Santa Clara County.

Close to 600 volunteers have signed up to conduct the two-day count next week, Wednesday and Thursday. They will fan out to count the unsheltered and use a new app to help collect information.

"We're so grateful to everybody who has signed up. It's a huge community-wide effort the training has been provided to all volunteers," said KJ Kaminski, the director of Supportive Housing,

The Bay Area had almost 39,00 sheltered and unsheltered people at the last count in 2023, with Santa Clara County having the highest number, 9,903.

Many advocates said that number is higher; next week's "point in time" county will help determine that.

The national PIT count not only offers a glimpse of the size of the problem but also helps determine how much federal funding certain communities receive to address it.

"There is no perfect way to count every person in the community," Kaminski said. "What we really want to know is 'What are the causes of homelessness?' 'How can we better use our resources and our programs to address them.. not only those causes but provide resources they need to exit homelessness and become housed."

The county will use the app counting us, which will stream back real-time data and help identify where the highest concentration of unhoused people is.

Groups such as Destination Home said the demographic information from the app would be crucial to determining the root problem.

"If we're seeing a lot more seniors who only have access to that social security benefit and no other type of savings, we know we need to provide 'direct' interventions to get those seniors off the streets and into a stable, safe environment," said Ray Bramson, chief operating officer of Destination Home. "If we see more 'foster youth' on the street than we have in the past, we know we're going to have to provide specialized youth services."

The county said this year's effort will utilize the largest group of paid volunteers who are currently unhoused or have experience with being unhoused.

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