Volunteers across San Diego County are preparing for the annual one-day, point-in-time homeless count that starts well before sunrise Thursday. The Regional Task Force on Homelessness spends about six months preparing for the count, which involves 1,700 volunteers, and then three months more analyzi ng the results, officials said. “This count has never been more important,” said Joshua Bohannan, chief strategy officer for Father Joe’s Villages. “When we survey our neighbors face-to-face, we can get a better understanding of their needs and connect them to resources,” Bohannan said in an email Thursday. “This can include referrals to shelters and detox services as well as things people need immediately to survive on the streets, like blankets and socks.” Information collected during the count helps service providers understand the circumstances that may force someone into homelessness, as well as ways to divert or prevent people from becoming homeless, he said. “The count helps illustrate where progress is being made and where the challenges remain greatest,” said Greg Anglea, chief executive officer of the regional nonprofit Interfaith Community Services. “In recent years, the levels of sophistication and accuracy of the count have improved, with each unsheltered individual not just ‘counted,’ but also interviewed and engaged to explore service and housing connections,” Anglea said. “The resulting data provides year-after-year comparisons, revealing important trends which help inform how we allocate the limited resources available to help people overcome homelessness,” he said. Homeless outreach, behavioral health, addiction treatment, and housing support resources are increasingly at risk as government funding dries up, Anglea said. “Last week, Interfaith’s proven, successful, addiction-focused homeless outreach team was part of the nationwide $2 billion (mental health block grant) cuts, just two years into a five-year $2.5 million grant,” he said. “Thankfully, those cuts were rescinded within 24 hours due to public pressure and outcry, but it highlights the funding uncertainty now surrounding these critical lifeline resources.” “Our organization works with all varieties of populations who are at risk of an experiencing homelessness,” Anglea said. “This last year we have seen low-income families … often with disabled heads of household, as well as seniors and others living on fixed incomes, hit the hardest.” For several hours Thursday morning, when the unsheltered are easiest to locate, teams of volunteers will walk or drive in their assigned census tract areas to identify homeless individuals or households and ask them questions, a Regional Task Force official said. Each team is led by a professional outreach worker or a seasoned volunteer. “Homeless people who participate in the questionnaires are given a pair of socks, a $10 7-Eleven gift card and a pamphlet with information on services in their area,” said Gary Warth, a former reporter at The San Diego Union-Tribune who is now the director of government relations, policy and communications for the Regional Task Force. A sportswear company, Bombas, provided 5,000 pairs of new socks for the event. “Volunteers in the count are trained through an online course,” Warth said Thursday. “Coordinators for each deployment site receive in-person training at (the task force) headquarters in mid January.” The final count includes people temporarily in shelters, where data is collected by the service providers running the shelters, and people living on the street, often in cars, tents or on sidewalks, who are counted by the volunteers. The Regional Task Force also works with Home Start, the YMCA, San Diego Youth Services and South Bay Community Services to collect data on young people not seen elsewhere. “As of yesterday afternoon, we had 1,313 volunteers signed up and need another 150 more to meet the quotas,” Warth said. “This includes 265 outreach workers and 394 county staff.” The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development requires the count to be conducted every two years, although the San Diego task force does it annually. Data from the count is used along with other information in a formula that helps to determine funding for local homeless services. “The count has evolved over the years from a simple head count to also including questionnaires that include demographic information,” Warth said. The volunteers ask people where they were living when they became homeless. The question is not required by HUD, but is done locally to address the assumption that many people who already are homeless move to San Diego. “Data collected over the years show that more than 80 percent of people who are homeless were living in San Diego when they became homeless,” Warth said. Last year’s count showed a 7% drop in homelessness across the region, according to the task force. Families without shelter were down by 72% from 2024, and homeless veterans decreased by 25%. “That was a step in the right direction and shows the targeted investments and partnerships between organizations like ours and our policymakers are making a difference,” said Bohannan at Father Joe’s. “But our work is far from done,” Bohannan said. “Federal and state cuts threaten to undo the gains our region has made. Additionally, we recognize that the rate of seniors experiencing homelessness has risen. As the cost of housing and living rises further out of reach for San Diegans, seniors remain especially vulnerable.” One in three people who experience unsheltered homelessness in the region are 55 or older, and half of them are experiencing homelessness for the first time, according to the task force. Individual cities with reductions from 2024 to 2025, including sheltered and unsheltered homelessness, were: San Diego, down 14%; Carlsbad, down 15%; Encinitas, down 12%; Oceanside, down 9%; La Mesa, down 9%; and Chula Vista, down 6%. Overall, the 2025 count found no less than 9,905 people experiencing homelessness throughout the county, down from 10,605 a year earlier, according to the task force. The 2025 number includes 5,714 unsheltered San Diego County residents and 4,191 individuals in shelters and transitional housing. The 2025 decline came after three years of steady increases. There was no point-in-time count in 2021, when it would have taken place at the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Regional homeless numbers hit a peak in 2017 and declined in 2018, 2019 and 2020, according to statistics from the task force. ...read more read less