REGION: Annual predawn count tracks homelessness locally, nationwide

OFF THE WIRE
State assemblyman joins volunteers on the streets in Mira Mesa, Ca
By GARY WARTH - gwarth@nctimes.com
About 550 volunteers armed with flashlights and clipboards hit the streets of San Diego County in the predawn hours Friday to search back alleys, storefronts and other locations in an annual nationwide effort to track homelessness.
Called the "point-in-time" count because it represents how many people are in shelters or on the street at a particular point in time, the annual survey is conducted in late January throughout the country and is used by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to help determine funding for various agencies.
Last year's point-in-time count found 2,070 homeless people in North County, a 6.4 percent increase from the previous year. Countywide, last year's count found 4,531 people on the street, a 12.9 percent increase, and another 3,975 people in shelters, a 2.5 percent increase.
Peter Callstrom, executive director of the San Diego Regional Task Force on the Homeless, said raw data from Friday's count may be released by late next week.
Callstrom met with about 15 volunteers in Poway City Hall at 4 a.m. Friday to coordinate the search teams that would be covering parts of inland North County.
"Do the best that you can, and go with your gut," he said, acknowledging that finding homeless people in Poway and Mira Mesa would not be as easy as finding them in downtown San Diego, where an estimated 1,100 people live in shelters or on the street.
New to this year's homeless count, volunteers were asked to interview willing participants about their backgrounds and living conditions in exchange for a $10 gift card to Subway sandwich shops. Also this year, the task force has dropped a previous attempt at counting migrant workers in a separate category, a practice Callstrom described as imprecise.
Volunteers on Friday included state Assemblyman Nathan Fletcher of the 75th District, which includes Poway, parts of Escondido, Mira Mesa, La Jolla and other areas.
"It's estimated that around 20 percent of all homeless are veterans," said Fletcher, a former Marine who served in Iraq and Africa. "That really hit me when I came back from Iraq. I thought, 'My gosh, how can you have veterans who sacrificed so much be homeless?'"
On Friday, Fletcher and staff members Christina Di Leva and Sterling McHale were assigned to patrol Mira Mesa. Volunteers were given maps and asked to mark where they found a person on the street, living in a car or living in a hand-built structure.
"There's one," Fletcher said from the passenger seat of McHale's pickup truck shortly before 6 a.m. Within moments, he was out of the vehicle and interviewing two men on the median at Black Mountain Road and Mira Mesa Boulevard.
The interviews revealed the broad spectrum of backgrounds that can exist among the homeless.
"Have you ever done any time in jail?" he asked David, one of the men.

"Sure," David answered. "Everybody has."
David described himself as a problem child who stole a '57 Chevy and sideswiped 32 cars when he was 13 years old. Standing on crutches, he said medical problems were the main reason he was homeless.
"Do you have any income at all?" Fletcher asked.
"You're looking at it," David said, holding a sign that read, "Please help."
His companion, Scott Allen, 51, said he has a master's degree in quality science from Biola University.
"I'm in the medical device industry," he said. "I started my own company in '92, doing contract engineering for other medical companies. In '06, two of my best clients got bought out by other companies and moved away."
Allen said he lost the clients just after he took out a second mortgage on his home, which he lost to foreclosure in 2008. He now lives in his car.
Fletcher did similar interviews with homeless people for the city of San Diego last September.
"It hits you that everyone has a story, and none of them plan to be homeless," Fletcher said. "I found out that none of them wanted to stay homeless."

Call staff writer Gary Warth at 760-740-5410.