The City of Lexington is looking for volunteers to help count homeless people January 29 from 10 p.m. to midnight. It’s part of the annual Lex End Homelessness Continuum of Care. Jeff Herron runs the city’s Office of Homelessness Prevention and Intervention. He said it’s a federally mandated, point in time count.
“And essentially, what it does is allow us to reach a count of our local population of persons experiencing homelessness and emergency shelter transitional housing programs, or on the streets, or places not meant for human habitation.”
Herron said teams of volunteers will go to dozens of sites where people are known to sleep overnight or where they’ve seen encampments – and gather important data.
“Are we seeing more persons that are homeless for the first time? Are we seeing persons that are chronically homeless? Are we seeing persons of certain age groups that really lets us know what kinds of resources that we need to be trying to build to effectively move people to permanent housing?”
Herron said the visits will allow volunteers and others to complete surveys, facilitate access to emergency shelters and distribute care packages.
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