Although some pretend they don't exist, there are scores of people sleeping in cars and, worse, on concrete in Pinellas County. Many are young children expected to go to school and do just as well on standardized tests as everyone else.
Every other year, a collection of nonprofits and volunteers hits the street before dawn in an effort to get a handle on the county's homeless population; it plans on doing so this Thursday, when teams will comb local parks, bus stops and shelters in order to get a good feel for how many people lack shelter.
And they don't just count, either.
Volunteers go down a comprehensive list of questions with participants, including ones involving demographics, family and medical issues. Most willingly participate, sharing with volunteers their stories of how thing got this bad for them.
"It's been a real eye-opener to me," said Cliff Smith, manager of veterans, social and homeless services with the city of St. Petersburg, in a promotional video on the Pinellas County Homeless Leadership Board Web site. "It's only a few hours of your day, but it impacts you for the rest of your life."
In 2013, the last time the count was conducted, volunteers found 6,592 homeless people living in Pinellas County, 2,495 of them children.
Included in those figures are individuals who are "doubling up," or as we call it, couch-surfing, with friends or family temporarily.
"What I'm seeing now is a growing number of younger people, a lot of vets who are coming back from our areas of conflict," said Carlen Petersen, chair of the Homeless Leadership Board, which organizes the bi-annual point-in-time homeless count, in the video. "We have to break the cycle. We have to find help for, not that we have to find help for everybody, but I really think we need to find help for our younger generation of homeless, because if we don't, it's just going to perpetuate."
Hillsborough's homeless count is slated to take place Feb. 26, and organizers are looking for volunteers.
More information on the Pinellas count here.
This article appears in Jan 22-28, 2015.