Thursday, January 28, 2016

GREATER LOS ANGELES HOMELESS COUNT - CENSUS TAKERS HOPING DRAMATIC INCREASE IN HOMELESSNESS WILL MEAN DRAMATIC INCREASE IN GOVERNMENT FUNDING

LA TIMES - HOMELESS COUNT 2016 - NOW  7,500 Volunteers are counting the homeless.  (Santa Monica, a separate city within the county, has also recently completed their count.)

The volunteers will gather at 150 deployment centers across the county over three nights beginning Tuesday night in the San Gabriel Valley and East Los Angeles.

The count will move to the San Fernando Valley, West Los Angeles and the South Bay on Wednesday night. Malibu, Pacific Palisades and the Antelope Valley will be counted Thursday morning. The count will conclude Thursday night in the central city and South Los Angeles.

"Amid growing public concern over the spread of homeless encampments to neighborhoods far from skid row, last year's count set off alarms by recording a dramatic increase in homelessness. The count set the number at 44,000 homeless people, a 12% increase over the previous count.
More than 33,000 of those were classified as unsheltered, living on the streets in encampments, doorways and vehicles."

"Under pressure to respond to what has been perceived as a growing crisis, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors this month published a blueprint for spending $150 million on short-term responses to homelessness. On the same day, L.A. city officials released a study concluding that ending homelessness would require the expenditure of $1.85 billion over a decade, mostly for permanent housing.

The 2015 count also shined a harsh light on a subset of the homeless population: veterans.
Its estimate of about 4,400 in the county forced Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti to back off a pledge he had made in July 2014 to end veteran homelessness by the end of 2015."

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