1:03 AM. "Why is my alarm buzzing?" I ask myself before sitting up in bed to rub my eyes. Twenty minutes later, I realize for the first time what the streets of Inglewood look like without any traffic, although the 10 mile commute to work still takes 25 minutes.
This morning by 2:00am the last of the 40 odd volunteers walk in to St Joseph Center for a brief training before we crawl the streets of Venice, California, looking for vulnerable homeless women and men to survey. We go in teams of 3 (some of us with police officers), and make notes of everyone we see. Thus our surveys are also counts of the total homeless population in the neighborhood.
But why are we out here so early, disturbing the poor vagabonds? The theory is that homeless tend to sleep in the same places, night after, although they move around during the day. Thus, in our 3 night survey, we should be able to get an accurate picture of the homeless that are part of the community. In addition to mapping the location of everyone sleeping on the streets, we're taking pictures of everyone we encounter who is willing to be photographed. In the surveys we ask a lot of health related questions, and we track demographic data too. These written and photographic information will make it easier to find these persons later.
The goal is to house the most vulnerable people. After all the data is collected, we'll analyze it to determine who we believe to be the most vulnerable and concentrate the efforts of the police, social service agencies, the government, and the public towards those identified as most at risk. This seemed to work well in Santa Monica (adjacent to Venice) and in some neighborhoods of New York City. We'll rely heavily on the medical information we gather to assess who is most at risk.
And tomorrow, I'll bring you back some stories from the street. But now, it's time to crash.
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