When several hundred homeless service workers and volunteers fan out across Orange County next week to count people living on the streets, they’ll collect a wealth of data about the characteristics of the county’s unhoused residents, where they are and what might help get them back on their feet.

But the bottom-line question is how many people are currently homeless in Orange County, and how that number compares to the last county-wide street census in 2019.

Those who work with the homeless say it’s a hard number to predict, especially given the mix of advances and setbacks the county has seen over the past three years.

“I don’t think anybody really knows what the count is going to look like,” said Father Dennis Kriz, a homeless advocate at Fullerton’s St. Philip Benizi Church who allowed people to camp on church property from 2017 to 2019. “It will be sort of a reset of everything.”

The “point in time” count – required every two years by the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development for some grants and funding – was postponed in 2021 because of the COVID-19 pandemic, and a surge in omicron infections pushed it from last month to this week.

The county and its nonprofit partner City Net are overseeing the count, which begins Monday, Feb. 21, with a tally of everyone in OC’s emergency shelters. From Tuesday to Thursday, employees and trained volunteers will visit “hot spots” where people are known to sleep or set up camp and also check surrounding areas.

Besides taking a head count, they’ll ask people to respond to more than two dozen survey questions about whether they’re employed, what ties they have to Orange County and other information. The data will take months to process and any takeaways – such as where to target programs and dollars – likely won’t be available before spring.

Progress made

Orange County’s 2019 count found 6,860 people considered homeless, of which more than 3,900 were on the streets (the remainder were in emergency or transitional housing).

Much has changed since then.

New emergency shelters have opened, adding nearly 1,500 beds in six cities (all in north or central Orange County). Four of those sites, known as “navigation centers,” make a point of offering counseling, case management, job placement and other services to help people find permanent homes and support themselves.

More than 400 units of permanent supportive housing for the formerly homeless have opened, including about 125 units just for military veterans. And a handful of cities have launched or stepped up their street outreach services, shifting from police to social workers as homeless liaisons who help get people under a roof, into rehab or wherever else fits their needs.

“We’ve seen a lot of progress. Some of that is that COVID has created opportunities that didn’t exist before, because it has released federal and state dollars for homeless interventions that didn’t exist,” said Matt Bates, vice president of City Net, which provides homeless services in more than a dozen OC cities and also works in Los Angeles, Riverside and Santa Barbara counties.

Admittedly, some of that progress came after lawsuits advocates filed on behalf of homeless people, some of whom argued they had nowhere to go when officials wanted to clear them out of a camp along the Santa Ana River trail near Angel Stadium.

Regardless of what may have spurred it along, some local officials are proud of what they’ve created to help people without a place to stay.

In Anaheim, “we’ve not had any major complaints from those who are around our shelters,” city spokeswoman Lauren Gold said, and the “community care response team” that addresses homeless issues has handled more than 15,000 calls in the year since it launched.

A renovated motel that was turned into permanent housing was full almost as soon as it opened, and the city has plans to convert another motel. Since fiscal 2018-19, the city has spent more than $47 million on homelessness (including state and federal grants), and it will certainly spend more in coming years to create low-income and supportive housing.

“I think everybody knows that’s really the key moving forward,” Gold said.

A homeless encampment near the intersection of The 5 Freeway and Brookhurst Street in Anaheim, CA, on Thursday, February 17, 2022. (Photo by Jeff Gritchen, Orange County Register/SCNG)

Multiple setbacks

But local officials and homeless providers acknowledge there’s plenty more work to do.

Kristina Silwal, who lives in a gated complex in Stanton near Beach and Garden Grove boulevards, endured weeks of frustration when a tent encampment sprouted alongside the nearby 5 freeway offramp. Silawal said residents noted an increase in petty thefts, car break-ins and people loitering behind a couple of old motels.

The spot is where the borders of several cities meet, and Silwal said when she complained, it felt like the issue was being putted between neighbors.

About a week ago, several agencies joined together to clear the camp out, but Silwal and her neighbors are “just really tired of it,” she said.

Also, while the pandemic helped create new funding streams to help the homeless, it put more families in financial peril and it forced emergency shelters to reduce capacity to avoid spreading the virus to vulnerable clients – so some new shelter beds that could have been filled went empty.

And a fundamental cause of homelessness, the lack of available or affordable housing, hasn’t improved. Vacancies are at lows not seen in two decades, and rents – after stalling or dropping for some of the pandemic – are back on the rise.

Kriz said at some emergency shelters, after 90 days (or whatever the maximum stay is) people end up back on the street because there’s nowhere else for them to go. And while OC Director of Care Coordination Doug Becht touted another 1,000 housing vouchers recently awarded to OC’s four housing agencies, Bates said he’s seen clients who already have vouchers unable find anyone to rent to them.

“There’s new people surfacing all the time that are falling into homelessness” because of broader economic forces, Bates said.

“We’re bailing water out of the boat on one side, but there’s a leak somewhere else,” he said, “you’ve gotta bail water and you’ve gotta plug the hole.”

More work to do

Whatever next week’s count shows – Bates is guessing it may be around 10% higher or lower than in 2019; Becht said the number in shelters is certainly greater, and the number of people on the streets might be too – homeless providers hope to build on the successes of the past three years.

Now there are plenty of emergency beds, but there’s a lack of permanent homes for people getting out of shelters, Bates said. However, “just the reality that we’ve moved that bottleneck from the streets to the shelters is good in and of itself – it’s more humane.”

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Becht said for the past three years, the county and its partners have focused on “building our infrastructure here and having an even approach to homelessness” that includes temporary and permanent shelter and an array of services.

The county made several applications to the state for motel conversion projects, and it will likely get millions more in a third round of grants to assist people in finding a home or staying in the one they’ve got.

Kriz, who advocates for a “safe parking” program for people who sleep in their cars, said he’d like to see more interest around the region beyond the pilot program Fullerton tried.

A secured parking place for overnight stays is relatively cheap to implement and, by keeping people from getting tickets for illegal parking and potentially losing their car, it could help prevent more street homelessness, he said.

Kriz keeps a monthly tally of deaths among the homeless, and he doesn’t want to see another year like 2021, when a record 382 Orange County residents died with no permanent home. He also hopes more of the community will get behind long-term solutions.

“I just continue to say, whatever you’re afraid of with the homeless, is it better that they’re on the streets?”