• On Oct. 30, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) released a report showing a 7 percent decline in California’s total homeless population since 2010. The data is compiled through what’s known as a point-in-time count held at the end of January, where volunteers and organizers count and/or survey homeless people on the street and in shelters. The 2014 assessment counted 578,424 persons experiencing homelessness in the U.S., and 113,942 of those counted were in California. Santa Barbara County does an on-the-street count every two years, the last of which was in January 2013. Jeff Shaffer with the Central Coast Collaborative on Homelessness said numbers in Santa Maria went up, from 244 in 2010 to 300 in 2013, but overall county numbers decreased between counts, 1,536 in 2010 and 1,466 in 2013. HUD only requires communities to do street counts every other year, but requires shelter counts on a yearly basis. Ed Cabrera of HUD’s regional office in San Francisco said communities sometimes carry over street counts from the previous year. “It makes it a bit inexact because you’re not really comparing apples to apples,” Cabrera said, adding that it’s one of the best tools HUD has to get a handle on homeless populations. “Estimates tend to be conservative,” he said. “But I think that over time those counts are getting more accurate.” HUD breaks the numbers down further too, into categories such as families, youths, and veterans. Cabrera said the Obama Administration has made a big push to end veteran homelessness and that more and more cities in California have joined the push. “I think it’s doable, because it’s a finite number,” he said.
This article appears in Nov 6-13, 2014.