City task force weighs count of homeless

Some members want Santa Clarita to take matters into their own hands

For their first meeting of the new year and third altogether, members of the Santa Clarita community task force on homelessness discussed the upcoming homeless point-in-time count.

The 2019 homeless count, which is an unduplicated count of sheltered and unsheltered individuals facing homelessness in the Santa Clarita Valley, is scheduled for Tuesday.

Behind the annual count is the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, where volunteers across 85 cities and unincorporated areas of L.A. County sign up for the evening work as they tally up individuals throughout their neighborhoods.

Jerrid McKenna, assistant to the city manager, said a total of 50 people had signed up for the SCV count. Usually, an estimated 100 volunteer out of the 200 recommended by LAHSA.

“We still need to fill that gap,” McKenna said to the committee of about 30 stakeholders.

Via social media, the city also has urged the public to participate in the count.

The reason behind their push for help goes back to tallying an accurate count to determine the amount of funds that would be allocated to local homeless programs.

The problem, many committee members raised during the meeting, is that, even using LAHSA’s method, the count is still inaccurate, resulting

in little to no resources awarded to help SCV’s homeless population. The most recent example occurred late last year, when LAHSA canceled a grant process for Bridge to Home due to insufficient funds, officials with the authority said. Previous counts had tallied no more than 330 people experiencing homelessness, but SCV leaders said more than 700 students alone are homeless.

Some members said a different method is needed and urged for Santa Clarita to take matters into their own hands.

“We have to come to a point where we know what we know and we go count where we know what we know,” Bridge to Home Executive Director Mike Foley said.

“If we’re going to do something different to show the truth about homelessness, we need to be evidence-based.”

Foley and a handful of other committee members suggested asking SCV organizations, such as hospitals, school districts and churches to share the counts they have recorded to reflect more accurate numbers.

“The issue is you can’t even get out of your car, and the count is only done on a single night,” one committee member said.

McKenna reminded the group that while “everyone is in consensus here,” LAHSA’s pointin-time count has very specific instructions, and communities are not allowed to change the methodology due in part to liability issues.

Committee Vice Chair Laurie Ender suggested approaching the matter as “just one count. We need to work on defining what homelessness is (in the SCV).”

One way the homeless task force already is looking into different count avenues is by bringing in UCLA graduate students, whose capstone project will develop a model of measurement Santa Clarita could use.

For those interested in signing up for the pointin-time count, visit theycountwillyou.org.