Riverside County’s 2020 homeless count will include those living in their cars.
The annual Point in Time Count seeks to count all the homeless people in the county.
Volunteers fan out across every city and unincorporated community in the county to count how many homeless people there are using an app.
This year, those volunteers will broaden their search to include those living in their cars.
Gonzalez-Rivera: “We will use the data from the 2019 Point-in-Time Count that shows where we found people living in cars last year and then we'll work closely with law enforcement for them to share their knowledge about where they see cars parked. And then we can focus our outreach teams to cover those areas during the Point-in-Time count.”
Laura Gonzalez-Rivera is Riverside County’s Point in Time Count coordinator. She says those looking to help out with the Point in Time count can sign up at rivcoexchange.com.
Gonzalez-Rivera: “They will definitely have a very interesting experience when going into the community and helping us out and helping, really, the homeless population in Riverside County, because these numbers, the Point-in-Time count numbers are used for funding that comes to Riverside County so they're very important and we really appreciate anyone who would take the time to come out and help us out.”
The 2019 Point in Time Count identified 2,811 sheltered and unsheltered homeless adults and children countywide, a 21-percent increase from the 2018 count.
