HOPE: Where Everyone Counts!

Once a year, the NYC Department of Homeless Services runs a very important survey to access the number of homeless individuals living on the streets.

This count is crucial because the department then has an idea of how many individuals are living on the streets, how this number has changed in recent years, and what services can be implemented to wipe out homelessness in the city.

This year, HOPE (Homeless Outreach Population Estimate) took place on January 27, 2014. The outreach purposely takes place late at night (after 12midnight) so a true number of homeless individuals can be attained. 

This was my first year on the outreach. It was a blessing to be amongst so many other volunteers who were passionate about healing our fellow men (and women!). There were many training sites around the five boroughs, and I stuck to the Upper East Side of Manhattan. The training session started at 10:30pm and at 12:15am, all grounds were supposed to be in their areas and surveying the land. My team was assigned the area around 86th street. Our group of seven further broke up into two groups, and we both had police escorts with us! It was also one of the first years that 'Code Blue' was activated! Because of the very cold temperatures (it was -15 degrees folks!!!!!!!), we were given more allowance to purposely wake up under-dressed individuals to offer shelter services to them.  In times past, we were not allowed to wake up sleeping individuals, but this night was different. Our team was done in about 1 hour and was back at our training site by 1:15am. We were treated to hot tea and snacks and many shared their adventures with others as we counted and tallied all our canvassing experiences.

I thank God for this opportunity, even if we didn't encounter anyone that night, we made a new friend who is also a believer! It was a great and hopeful night!