Austin Homeless Count Getting Underway This Weekend

Last year, 2,362 homeless people were counted in the combined Austin–Round Rock area. This Sunday, the 2012 count of Austin’s homeless begins, and count organizers still need volunteers.

The Ending Community Homelessness Coalition (ECHO) needs people to travel parts of Austin and report the number of homeless, and volunteers to help enter the data they collected.

ECHO describes the work in more detail:

Teams of volunteers will canvas Travis County to count homeless men, women and children in the area to get an accurate sum of the homeless population to help secure federal funding, which provides resources for the county’s homeless service providers. The results of the count will include demographics, reasons for homelessness and trends in homelessness to compare with previous data to assess and improve community performance in preventing and ending homelessness.

The results of the ECHO’s “point-in-time” assessment will then be sent along to the Department of Housing and Urban Development, which aggregates data nationwide for a comprehensive report.

According to the National Alliance to End Homelessness, the 2011 count of homeless in the Austin–Round Rock area (with a combined population of 1.7 million) was large enough to rank the area’s homeless population as 37th largest numerically out of the 100 largest metro areas, and 57th largest as a percentage of the entire population.

People wishing to volunteer in the count can get more details at ECHO's website.