Teams fan out across Sonoma County for homeless census

Dean Talent, a formerly homeless Sonoma County man who spent years living outdoors, awoke in his Santa Rosa apartment Friday. As the sun began to rise, Talent donned warm winter clothes and set out to walk Santa Rosa’s creek paths in search of homeless encampments, including some of the same ones he called home for years.

Talent was one of 75 current and formerly homeless people paired up Friday with volunteers for Sonoma County’s 2015 homeless census, a daylong effort to tally the number of homeless people who sleep outdoors, in their vehicles and in shelters. Similar counts are underway throughout the Bay Area this week and next.

In Sonoma County, roughly 70 teams, led by homelessness guides like Talent, fanned out to tally every unsheltered person in each of the county’s 99 census tracts, from rural communities along the Russian River and coastal encampments to more concentrated gathering spots like downtown Santa Rosa.

The last homeless count, in January 2013, identified 4,280 homeless people living in Sonoma County, with 77 percent of those people considered shelterless.

The actual number of people who experienced homelessness during the year was about double, with nearly 10,000 estimated to be without housing at some point during 2013, according to an extrapolation made by the firm the county hires to conduct the census. The previous count, in 2011, found similar figures, with 4,359 homeless people tallied and nearly 13,000 without housing during the year.

Homeless advocates and nonprofit service providers said although detailed data and demographic information about homeless people tallied this year will not be available until April, the county’s rebounding economy could have led to an increase of people living on the streets this year.

“My feeling is that the number of homeless people has gone up because of the economy, and the housing market in particular,” said Jennielynn Holmes, director of shelter and housing for Catholic Charities, the county’s largest nonprofit provider of homeless services. “The rents were not nearly this bad two years ago, but I really hope I’m proven wrong. I hope we see numbers going down.”

Sonoma County, like many other California counties, conducts homeless counts every two years. Officials use the resulting data, including not just population numbers but other information on length of homelessness, substance abuse history and health status, to compete for funding through the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development, the largest source of support for housing programs and other homelessness services.

Starting this year, county officials plan to switch to an annual count, a shift that officials say will help the county keep more accurate data about how many people are living without permanent shelter.

Already, the county’s homeless shelters are at capacity. More timely data could help the county qualify for additional state and federal dollars to implement a spectrum of homeless assistance programs launched over the past year by the Board of Supervisors.

That includes a $2 million initiative aimed at getting hard-to-reach homeless people into services, and eventually, housing.

Some of the money supports the county’s new homeless outreach team, which debuted during Friday’s count.

“We are trying to really understand the homeless population in Sonoma County, and the (outreach) team is an integral part of that,” Holmes said. “It’s going to help target our efforts to people who are unsheltered, who we might not normally interact with.”

In addition to housing, services the county is seeking to bolster include treatment for substance abuse and mental health problems, enrollment help with public assistance programs offering food and health care.

Count organizers said the point-in-time approach is unique in California and throughout the country because it engages current and formerly homeless people to lead volunteers in seeking out where homeless people gather.

“The average person doesn’t necessarily know where the pathways to encampments are, and sometimes it’s also hard to discern whether individuals on the streets are homeless or not,” said Peter Connery, vice president of Applied Survey Research, the firm contracted by the county to lead the local count. The firm pays the homeless guides $10 per hour for the roughly five hours the count takes in each area.

Talent, 55, who slept along the Santa Rosa Creek trail for three years until he found an apartment two years ago, said he was glad to be a part of the effort.

“I’d do it for free, because I know it’ll help others who are in the same situation I was in,” he said.

He was teamed Friday with local volunteer Kim Valadez.

Valadez is an employee with the federal Department of Veterans Affairs who oversees the local housing subsidy program for veterans. She helped Talent, a veteran who has struggled with alcoholism, get enrolled in a local substance abuse program, then linked him with a housing voucher.

The two were surveying a stretch of the Santa Rosa Creek trail Friday.

“I’m so fortunate to have had her help,” Talent said.

You can reach Staff Writer Angela Hart at 526-8503 or angela.hart@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter ?@ahartreports.