Thank you again to everyone who made the 2019 Homeless Count a success. If you have not already, please read our last blog post, as this one starts where that one left off. One last detail, though, to add to that one, is the number of folks that helped us that evening. (Drum roll!) We have tallied everything up, and this year, once again, we exceeded 1,550, including count volunteers, registration volunteers and police officers. You can check out hundreds of pics from that evening on our Facebook page, in our Wilshire site album and our FUMC Dallas site album.
Volunteer training at the FUMC Dallas deployment site
In the last blog post, we promised to share our next steps. In other words, OK, so we’re done with the Count; now what?
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 on Monday they went out to assist seniors aged 65+.
United Way of Metropolitan Dallas‘ 1st Facebook Live with Carl Falconer, MDHA President & CEO
The main thing we will do now, though, is compile all the data we collected, of both the sheltered and unsheltered counts, “clean” everything up, correcting for duplicates and other errors, and “slice and dice” the data by specific demographic groups. We will carefully analyze the results, and figure out what they tell us about trends in homelessness, what is working in our homeless response system, and where our community needs to course correct.
MDHA Chair, Karen Hughes, President & CEO, Vogel Alcove and her team, prepare to go out and count
On Thursday, March 14, 2019, 9.30-11.30am, we will hold our annual State of the Homeless Address at Goodwill Industries of Dallas. Carl Falconer, MDHA President and CEO, will share the results of the 2019 Homeless Count, progress of the Homeless Response System, and the vision to end homelessness in our community. Please save the date, and, better still, sponsor this signature event!
United Way of Metropolitan Dallas‘ 2nd Facebook Live with Carl Falconer, MDHA President & CEO
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 2019. You can check out the 2018 report by clicking here.
