On Jan. 27, Claremont participated alongside the rest of the San Gabriel Valley in the 2015 Greater Los Angeles Homeless Counting Program. In Dec. 1993, the Los Angeles Board of Supervisors, Los Angeles Mayor, and the Los Angeles City Council, created this program in order to help the homeless by supporting them with needed resources.The volunteers observe different areas in the Los Angeles County to count the number of homeless people and record the conditions of different areas in Los Angeles County.

The Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority (LAHSA) is the nation’s largest homeless census and their goal is to decrease the homeless population by supporting them with resources they need and finding the solution to the problem. In order to do this, the support of many people are needed in different parts of the project.

This program is supported by the members of the leadership team. Peter Lynn, the executive director of LAHSA, brought great support to more than 50,000 homeless people by his production on the houses. He also received the Outstanding Leadership Award from the County Department of Mental Health because of his work on building houses for the homeless that have mental illness. There are also many other leaders, like, the Chief Financial Officer Chester Bieganski, the Director of Homeless Services Jeanette Rowe, the director of Policy and Planning Grace Weltman, the Director of Administration Keshia Douglas, and Director of IT and Homeless Management Information System Aamir Shaikh.
LAHSA is funded through City of Los Angeles, County of Los Angeles, and other agencies. This year, LAHSA announced that they received $91.9 million from the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

“The count is entirely volunteer based and it is funded through LAHSA,” Management Analyst of LAHSA, Lauren Marshall said.

The volunteers not only included the citizens, but also the Claremont Mayor Joe Lyons and Claremont Homeless Advocacy Program (CHAP). One may wonder how counting the amount of people in different locations can help decrease the population of the homeless. The result on the number of homeless people and the location of where they live brought great help to LAHSA because it informed them to get support them from many leaders, people, and stakeholders to bring a bigger change with their power. The data gathered from the count allows anyone to access how and where homeless persons can best be served.

“This program occurs every 2 years, and this year, the City of Claremont had over 50 volunteers which included the city staff and community members,” Marshall said.

In the bigger picture, LAHSA had 6,000 people all around the county that helped out in the count. With the help of many people taking their time to volunteer, the count was able to continue throughout the years.

As the number of volunteers increased, it allowed a more precise count for each specific place, and that allowed more resources to be invested to the highest population of the homeless people. The benefit for volunteering in this project is that it allows the people to choose where they like to count, so that they feel comfortable in the environment. Also, for safety reasons, the volunteers are required to be trained in cases of danger and be provided with equipment as well.

With parent permission, Claremont students can participate in the 2017 Homeless count. One way to support is to volunteer every two years and help investigate the different places, and this will bring data and facts to the leaders so that they can use them to find the solution to this problem. So throughout this project, Claremont can show improvement each time.