Counting the Unsheltered Homeless in Greater Minnesota
Conducting a comprehensive census of people who are homeless and unsheltered is always challenging, but it’s even harder in Greater Minnesota.
In Greater Minnesota, there are few service providers and they serve large areas, stretching across several counties. Furthermore, the homeless in rural areas are often doubled-up and thus are not considered homeless by the federal government. But without an accurate count, resources will continue to be shifted away from rural areas to larger urban areas where the homeless are more visible.
The Wilder Research Center will be conducting its homelessness survey on October 26, 2006. We encourage local planning groups to get started with their planning for the survey well before then to more effectively count rural homeless.
Some recommendations for your planning:
- July/August:
- August/September:
- Churches
- Mail carrier or rural paper route driver
- County road maintenance workers
- Forest service personnel
- Animal control
- Library staff
- County social service office
- Police / Sheriff / Fire department / Constable
- Surveyors
- Probation / parole officers
- Emergency room / Community clinic staff
- Detox facility
- School social worker / Title I liaison
- DNR officer / game warden
- Mental health providers / crisis response team
- Food / clothing shelf programs
- Community action program
- Block nurse / Home Health agencies
- Public Health agency
- Animal control / Humane Society officer
- Veterans service organizations
- Building inspector / housing inspector / code compliance officer
- Taxation and assessment officer
- Railroad maintenance crew
- Public works maintenance crew
- Day labor office
- Plasma donation center
- State / local / private campgrounds
- Hotels / motels / extended-stay lodging
- Public transportation / transit stations -– ask bus drivers about all-night riders
- Truck stops / Walmart parking lots
- All-night restaurants
- Junkyards / recycling / scrap-metal yards
- Drop-in centers / community support programs
- September/October:
- Develop a timeline, assign tasks to specific people, set a realistic goal so you don’t become overwhelmed with trying to cover 20 counties (ie. 15 percent increase in the number of people counted or outreach to five additional communities).
- Talk to the people in your community who can help you identify places to find people experiencing homelessness on the day of the survey. In rural areas, the homeless are often camped in abandoned garages, vehicles, hunting shacks, etc. Somebody in your local housing/homeless group is likely kith or kin to folks who see the homeless and precariously housed on a regular basis. Start by asking the people you already have trusted relationships with and work with them to compile a list of locations. Here are some examples of people in the community; your group can likely brainstorm many more:
- Divide the list of known sites/addresses/locations among the various volunteers. Develop a safe and respectful way to conduct the actual survey on October 26th.
Getting a more accurate count will require more work on the front-end; you will likely have a good idea of the number of people before survey day. Save the lists of locations for future counts.
Contact Liz Kouppala for more tips for preparing for your census.
