MODESTO, Calif. — Volunteers spent all day Thursday scouring Stanislaus County, working to count every single homeless person within county lines.
More than 230 people came to help out with their annual point-in-time count.
Heather Antonini is working to help count every homeless person in Beard Brook Park.
"It's a conversation instead of it just being a form and asking question by question. You make it a conversation and you're sensitive to their stories," Heather Antonini, a family advocate for the Center for Human Services said.
They say it's no longer just a count. They're asking a series of 27 questions to find out more about them.
"Everything from where were you last housed and when did you become a veteran? Do you have kids that are coming with you?" Maryn Pitt, the Operations Section Coordinator for the point-in-time count said.
Multiple agencies mapped out exactly where homeless people have been known to stay within Stanislaus County lines.
"People got to really fight to be OK out here," Richard Curran, a homeless 18-year-old at Beard Brook Park said.
More than 230 volunteers hit the ground running at 6:30 a.m. to interview every homeless person they could find. They're talking to people like 18-year-old Richard Curran.
"I've tried different spots with my parents and they haven't worked out too well. My mother is currently at the Mission and my dad is at the Salvation Army," he said.
He's been homeless since he was 14, and because of that, he never graduated high school.
"It was really difficult trying to continue high school social life smelling like a homeless kid," he said.
In the long run, the number counted on Thursday will determine how much state funding the county will get for homeless resources.
"Being able to have an outreach team and a mobile station, you can kinda show them directly well. This is a result of counting your guys and getting an accurate count of how many people are experiencing homelessness, so we can put resources where they need to be and put funding where it needs to be," Antonini said.
In 2017, there were roughly more than 1,700 people counted living on the street, freeing up more than $7 million in Homeless Emergency Aid Program (HEAP) funding.
And while the official count this year won't be ready for another six weeks, coordinators say they believe those numbers will likely be much higher because of their new process.
"This is the first year that we've engaged in an incident action plan with this many volunteers. And that's really the critical thing, is how many volunteers we can mobilize on this day to make sure that we cover every river bottom, every sort of known location," Pitt said.
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