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In an effort to "help establish a more comprehensive accounting of the extent of homelessness in San Francisco," Mayor Gavin Newsom and San Francisco's City’s Human Services Agency (HSA) announced plans to conduct the bi-annual homeless count on Tuesday, January 27, 2009. Fun! It will go down from 8 p.m. to 12 a.m.and involve hundreds of volunteers who spread across San Francisco and calculate the amount hobos, happy wanders, extreme nature lovers, and housing-free folks living on the streets and in the parks of SF.
"Having an accurate count of our homeless community is essential in determining the effectiveness of our homeless outreach efforts," said Mayor Newsom, who is currently sexing it up in Washington DC. "We’ve got a long way to go toward ending chronic homelessness in San Francisco, but this count will help us to continue in the right direction."
Continue in the right direction. Whatever does he mean by that?
Anyway, if you would like to volunteer in this odd count, please contact Homelesscournt@sfgov.org or call 415-558-2346.
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Do they get tagged after counting? Or is there some other way to make sure everyone gets counted only once?
I think it's catch and release.
I was going to make a beautifully crafted comment about the irony of Newsom counting the homeless on the same day that we're inaugurating a president who can't even count the amount of houses he has, but you people elected the wrong guy and the symmetry of my argument is all to shit.
I thought McCain was the one who didn't know how many houses he had? Obama was sworn in.
Besides, the announcment of counting people, was announced last week
That's what I said.
Corrections:
The count starts at 7pm-Midnight
E-mail: homelesscount@sfgov.org
BTW: How can Newsom "continue in the right direction" when all he has done is to HINDER someone from exiting homelessness.
He has cut services AND funding. Shelters are turning people away on a nightly basis with no where else to go. Let's see, he ignored the voters on Prop L (Poverty Court) and still try and go through with it. The voters have spoken.
Homelessness means "no home"
A count is a wonderfull idea but, if the Mayor is going to continue to ignore the voices of his constituests, then all are lost...
He realy wants to be Gov. of California?
Didn't Arnold already f**k that up for us?
we need to post cops at the mighty dog and caltrain stations. i've heard/read that they did this during the depression to stop new homeless folks from coming to town.
that may be our only hope of ever getting a handle on this problem.
A bi-annual homeless person is someone who is homeless every 2 years. They should count the people who are homeless more or less than that, too.
I actually recognize the homeless guy in the picture. He's usually in or around Powell st Bart/Muni station. Its almost scary how you get to sort of know them or are just so used to seeing them.
Soylent Green is an interesting solution.
This is a great idea that has been a long time coming. In order to effectively advocate for services, organizations need good estimates as to the numbers of homeless. Any SFian would agree that there are "a lot of homeless". But actually knowing how many is needed to better use the limited resources that exist. NYC has been doing this for a few years.
I encourage you to volunteer to help. Public service in the hizouse!
This thing is really very silly in many ways: Last time 'round, they put out tester cars with bright orange signs to see approximately what portion of homeless people they accidentally skipped. They missed more than half the tester cars, so the City just decided to ignore the possibility of having missed some portion of the homeless population. Statistically *hella* sound. Like whoa.
However! The greater the number of people are counted, the more money the City gets from the Federal Department of Housing and Urban Development for homeless programs, the less we spend on these programs from the General Fund. So the count isn't just silly: It's silly &… hrmm… impactful?