In Dallas Everybody Counts. OK, What Happens Next?

Wow. What can we say? Thursday night, you showed that, in Dallas, everybody counts.   

We had so many volunteers at our largest site, First United Methodist Church, Dallas, that the first floor of the sanctuary, which seats 800, could not fit everyone. Some of our volunteers had to go up to the balcony! Altogether, we broke the record we set last year, in what was, once again, the largest Homeless Count in Texas history, with over 1,500 volunteers.

 So many organizations and individuals helped us pull this off. There is no way we could thank everyone who helped us. We did want to highlight First United Methodist Church, Dallas, and Wilshire Baptist Church, who hosted our two Dallas sites. And, as usual, our friends at United Way of Metropolitan Dallas proved indispensable, in spreading the word about the need for volunteers, and in running a special campaign, Warm a Sole, to give a pair of socks to every person experiencing homelessness in Dallas and Collin Counties.

 
Do you have pics, stories or impressions to share about that night, which you have yet to post? Please share them, using: #dallascounts2018.

If this is your first Homeless Count, and even if you have done a few before, you might be asking, OK, what happens now? Great question!

First of all, as we mentioned on our blog before, the use of the Counting Us app helped us and our partners immediately connect persons experiencing homelessness to services. Since the app automatically records the exact latitude and longitude of each person counted, we were able to supply outreach teams with this information. They were then able to go out the very next morning to assist individuals who might qualify for specific programs, specifically, youth, veterans, persons with HIV/AIDS, and pregnant women.

 The main thing we will do now, though, is compile all of the results we collected, of both sheltered and unsheltered counts, "clean" them up, correcting for duplicates and other errors, and "slice and dice" them by specific demographic groups. We will carefully analyze the results, and figure what they tell us about trends in homelessness, what is working in our homeless response system, and where our community needs to course correct.

On Wednesday, March 21, 2018, 9.30-11.30am, we will hold our annual State of the Homeless Address at Goodwill Industries of Dallas. Cindy J. Crain, MDHA President and CEO, will share the results of the 2018 Point-in-Time Homeless Count, and the progress of the Homeless Response System. Please save the date!

 

Finally, we will submit the results of the Count to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). These results will go into a national report HUD will submit to the U.S. Congress in late 2018. You can check out the 2017 report by clicking here. 

The 2018 Homeless Count - There’s an App for That!

It’s time for the annual Homeless Count, Thursday, January 25, 2018, 7pm-Midnight, and if you’ve seen one Homeless Count, you’ve seen them all, right? Wrong! In 2016 and 2017, the Metro Dallas Homeless Alliance (MDHA) radically changed the way it conducts its annual Homeless Count, in order to get much more reliable data. So, what changed?

Volunteers prepare for the Homeless Count on the night of January 26, 2017
 

• We recruit more volunteers – With more volunteers, we can canvas more areas, and that means improved accuracy.
• Volunteers count the unsheltered homeless only – We know where the sheltered homeless are. They are sheltered, after all! Shelters provide MDHA with an accurate count of these folks, electronically. That way our volunteers can concentrate on finding the unsheltered homeless.
• We use geographic information system (GIS) mapping software – The software helps us plan volunteer routes, as well as tier them, according to the likelihood of the presence of homeless persons in any given area.
• We ask volunteers to register in advance as teams – This helps us plan the exact routing of volunteers, streamline the Count, and utilize volunteers’ time during the evening of the Count. 

Counting Us app (Courtesy of Simtech Solutions)

• There’s an app for that – If in previous years, we used paper surveys printed out on double sided legal-size pages, in 2017 we said goodbye to paper, with the Counting Us app from Simtech Solutions! This app eliminates the need for volunteers to return to their deployment sites to drop off completed surveys, as well as the need for more volunteers to transcribe hundreds of surveys in the weeks following the Count. Instead the app uploads each survey immediately. The app also allows us to see survey data as it is being gathered in real-time, in a virtual command center, full of intuitive dashboards and maps, and better analyze the data after the Count.
• We use the information we collect to connect people to services – We ask volunteers to collect names and contact information of those they count (with their permission), and the app automatically records their exact latitude and longitude, using GPS. Then, the very night of the count we can supply outreach teams with this information, so they can go out the very next morning to assist individuals who may qualify for specific programs, including youth, veterans and persons with specific medical diagnoses.

Register today to volunteer for the Homeless Count, Thursday, January 25, 2018, 7pm-Midnight: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/PITCountDallas. For more details: http://www.mdhadallas.org/2018-homeless-count/

 

Dallas Counting Us command center – January 26, 2017