Homeless Counts Scheduled Across Riverside County

RIVERSIDE COUNTY, CA — Monday marked the last day to register to volunteer for the Riverside County 2020 point-in-time homeless count, slated to begin on Jan. 29.

The effort is key to understanding how many homeless or housing- insecure residents live within Riverside County, and the nation. The data are used by Department of Housing and Urban Development officials to determine how to distribute federal funding, and by policy makers in determining the scope of homelessness nationwide — including what's working, and what's not.

Volunteers are slated to canvass Jan. 29 from 5:30 a.m. to 9:30 a.m. for a general count, and from 2 p.m. to 8 p.m. Jan. 29-31 to specifically tally how many children are affected by homelessness.

The 2019 count identified a total of 2,811 sheltered and unsheltered homeless adults and children across the county, a 21 percent increase from 2018 numbers.