Long Beach homeless count underway Thursday
Long Beach homeless count begins Thursday
Volunteers in Long Beach are out on the streets Thursday in an effort to count the number of unhoused people in the city. This count has been delayed twice by the COVID-19 pandemic.
LONG BEACH, Calif. - Volunteers in Long Beach Thursday are taking to the streets in an effort to collect data on the status of the homeless crisis in the city. The city of Long Beach's 2022 Point in Time Count begins Thursday and hopes to do three things — understand the scope of homelessness in the city, determine what resources are working to aid the community's homeless population, and figure out what needs to improve.
Groups of volunteers got to work around 5 a.m. Thursday, to talk to and count homeless community members.
Thursday's canvassing is two years in the making, after the COVID-19 pandemic delayed the count twice — once in 2020, and again in January 2022, at the height of the surge of the COVID-19 omicron variant.
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"The Homeless Point in Time Count is an important tool in allowing the city to better serve people experiencing homelessness in Long Beach," Mayor Robert Garcia said in a press release.
Both Los Angeles and Orange counties are in the midst of their biannual homeless counts this week, after similar delays.
As of the latest count, there were about 2,000 unhoused individuals living in the city, up from the year before. According to FOX 11's Christy Fajardo, city officials expect that number to go up this time around.
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