Along with more than 300 volunteers and service providers, the City of Long Beach’s Department of Health and Human Services will be conducting its sixth biennial count of homeless persons tomorrow.

The 2013 “Everyone Counts” event is a national, mandatory procedure enforced by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. “This count defines the scope of homelessness and…helps determine existing resources, identify gaps, and highlight progress towards ending homelessness,” according to a city press release. 

In 2011, over 370 service providers, volunteers and homeless persons participated in the last count. Their findings, submitted in the Long Beach Homeless Services Advisory Committee Annual Report, concluded that there were 4,290 homeless men, women and children in Long Beach–a nine percent increase from the previous 2009 count. This number was alarmingly close to the count of 2003, which is the highest to date at 5,845. The growth rate was said to be a result of the prolonged economic recession and was seen across Southern California.

The report also documented that those most likely to be homeless were senior and/or disabled citizens on a fixed income, single parents, families under foreclosure and those under strain of the high unemployment rate.

About three-hundred community volunteers are needed to conduct this year’s count, which will consist of two parts. First, volunteers will identify the number of homeless families and individuals living in emergency, transitional and permanent housing. Then, teams of three volunteers will (with the aid of a service provider) canvas Long Beach’s 47 map segments to count the remaining homeless throughout the city.

If you are still interested in voluntering, please fax your volunteer forms to (562) 570-4066 or call Elsa Ramos of the Multi-Service Center at (562) 733-1147.

For volunteer registration forms and additional information, visit www.longbeach.gov/health/fss/homeless_services/default/.asp.