“I go there at a certain hour, and I’m always looking over my shoulder,” Michael Maxson said about the secluded spot he has founded to bed down in. On Thursday, one homeless man spending the afternoon in Grape Day Park said the same. “Especially in Escondido, because they’re trying to push them out.” “Let me assure you, they don’t want to be found,” Ferro said. While homeless people are not hard to find at night in downtown San Diego, they keep a lower profile Escondido. The woman would be the first of 11 homeless people the two women would count in downtown Escondido.Ī search through Grape Day Park and the alleys around Grand Avenue proved fruitless, however. “There’s one,” said Ferro as she spotted a homeless woman sitting by herself in an alley by a 7/Eleven at about 4:15 a.m. Scott Peters, state Assemblywoman Toni Atkins, San Diego County Supervisor Greg Cox, San Diego Interim Mayor Todd Gloria and City Council members Sherri Lightner, David Alvarez, Mark Kersey and Scott Sherman.Īmong the 45 volunteers at Interfaith Community Services in Escondido were realtor Donna Davis and Interfaith’s faith liaison Mary Ferro, who drove together in search of the city’s homeless. It’s a way to keep this community aware of homelessness.” “And the other folks are the people who move the issue in other ways. “They are the people who move the needle policy-wise,” Diaz said about the politicians. Volunteers also included a number of elected officials and civic leaders who gathered at Golden Hall in downtown San Diego to participate in surveys for the Campaign to End Homelessness in Downtown San Diego. As for the number of volunteers, Diaz said participation is up by about 400 this year largely because of a large number of county workers who joined in. Numbers from the count, which included people in shelters and transitional housing, will be released sometime in the spring, Diaz said. they were on the streets with flashlights and clipboards for a three-hour count. Friday morning, more than 1,300 volunteers countywide gathered in 20 deployment stations, including new locations in Ramona, Lakeside, Mira Mesa and Oceanside. Law enforcement officials also helped by highlighting maps to show where they believed homeless people could be found, she said.ĭiaz said she’d like to see the count evolve to include more personal surveys of homeless people, although that will take more training.Īt about 3:30 a.m. The count has changed over the years, and Diaz said this year the San Diego Association of Governments helped improve maps for volunteers. “It made visibility more difficult.”Īs of last year, San Diego was third behind only New York and Los Angeles in its homeless population, yet was 18th in the nation in receiving federal funds, according to Diaz. “I can’t prove this, but I do believe the number was affected because it happened to rain last year,” Diaz said about the drop in numbers. The number represented a 7.7 percent drop from the previous year, although it still was 4.5 percent higher than in 2010.
Last year’s count found 8,900 people living in shelters, in vehicles or on the street in San Diego County. Similar counts are conducted throughout the nation. The task force conducts the annual survey, known as the point-in-time count or WeAllCount, and the results are used to help determine funding for homeless programs in the county.
“I say, ‘If I count one homeless, it’s one too many.’” “Some people say, ‘Do you want the numbers to go up? Do you want the numbers to go down?” said Dolores Diaz, executive director of the Regional Task Force on the Homeless. SAN DIEGO - A record number of volunteers took to the streets early Friday morning to count homeless people throughout the county, including in areas new to the annual survey.
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