LOGAN — It’s a count that is conducted statewide and nationwide once a year to gauge the problem of homelessness and was done in late January locally in Cache, Rich and Box Elder counties.
On KVNU’s For the People program on Tuesday, department chair in Social Work at Utah State University, Jess Lucero, who headed up this year’s count in the Bear River area, explained how it is done.
“Yeah, it’s a single Point-in-time count and it happens in every jurisdiction across the United States at the same time. So, it gives us a chance to kind-of compare unsheltered and sheltered homelessness across the entire country. We go out in teams all across the region, and that’s our Cache, Rich and Box Elder counties. This year we had over 120 volunteers who showed up from our Utah State community and from our wider community,” Lucero explained.
She said they get a survey out to ones who are unsheltered but they are also connecting them to resources that exist in our communities and sharing warming items and hygiene items and things like that.
So, as far as the count, what did they find this year?
“We had 14 who were at the (William A Burnard)Warming Center, we have 34 individuals who were in motel shelter, and that motel is provided by our Bear River Association of Governments or BRAG. We had 11 who were in shelter at CAPSA and 90 that were in transitional housing at CAPSA that evening. We had eight who were sheltered at New Hope Crisis Center, the domestic violence center over in Box Elder County. And then we had 41 unsheltered individuals that we encountered.”
Lucero said the primary places they were identifying unsheltered ones were those sleeping in their cars.
She stressed these are all unofficial numbers. Official numbers from the state of Utah should come out this summer.
She was asked how the public can help.
“Becoming well-versed on what resources exist within our community, it’s huge. So, being able to connect folks who are experiencing homelessness to the warming center, to BRAG, to CAPSA, to New Hope, to our service providers who can help, I think is really crucial.”
She said with homeless numbers generally on the upswing, where individuals can and are able to donate or hold donation drives for resources in the community that can help homeless ones.