H.O.P.E. Count

H.O.P.E. in this case stands for Homeless Outreach Population Estimate and it is a process relying almost entirely on volunteers to assess the size and location of New York City's homeless population. I know this, because I spent most of Monday night and early Tuesday morning, accompanied by my wife Karen and 3 students from Wagner College, walking the streets of three South Shore Staten Island neighborhoods looking for homeless people.

Here's how it worked. The five of us showed up at one of the two training sites on Staten Island at about 10:30 pm on Monday evening. The site we went to is on the South Shore, the other is on the North Shore. We reported in, received our assignment, were exposed to a very brief training session, primarily on how to approach homeless individuals, loaded up on coffee and granola bars, and finally headed out into the 35 degree weather just a little before Midnight.

We parked our car near the first set of blocks we would be walking and then, following the map we had been given, carefully traced the route indicated. We had strict instructions to walk every block shown on the map and to speak to anyone whom we suspected might lack housing. This meant that people waiting for a bus or working for, say, the city should be not be approached, but that anyone else who seemed lost or aimless or insecure should be spoken to. Our script was simple. If we saw someone we suspected was homeless, we were to say. "Hello, I'm Steve Preskill, and I'm working for New York City as a volunteer. We are asking people about their housing situation. Any information you give us will remain confidential. Do you mind if we ask you a few questions?" We never did get to follow this script exactly as written, because when we encountered the one person that morning who probably was homeless, I became flustered and said incorrectly "We are asking people about their homeless situation." The person we met, who was rummaging through recycled bottles and cans, immediately answered that he was not homeless and had an apartment not far from where we found him. We should have asked him additional questions that were on our list, but because of our nervousness we were unsure how to proceed. About a half hour later we met this same person again, at a new location, but still very busily rummaged through recycled materials. We said hello, but again did not follow up with additional questions. We concluded, nevertheless, that it was likely he was housing insecure.

At another time that morning, we encountered a young woman who seemed to be hurrying somewhere and this time we more accurately used the script to ask her about her housing situation, but it was pretty clear that she lacked English proficiency and was, in fact, heading for her domicile.

Basically, then, we ran into only one potentially homeless person, despite the fact that we walked all the streets we were assigned and did not finish until close to 4 am on Tuesday. It turns out this is fairly typical during these HOPE counts, but we were glad to participate in this process and to gain this valuable experience. We knew, as well, that we were part of a corps of volunteers who were helping New York City to get a much more accurate count of the homeless population and, as a result, would be better able to provide homeless individuals with the services they might need. In fact, New York City's official count of its homeless population has dropped dramatically since the HOPE count began in 2005, despite the hard economic times. This is a strong indicator that the HOPE count is working and that people like us are contributing something valuable to the overall welfare of the City.
To learn more about the HOPE Count as recommended by John, please go here: https://a071-hope.nyc.gov/hope/welcome.aspx