Help the NYC Dept. of Homeless Services Conduct Outreach

The NYC Department of Homeless Services (DHS) is conducting their annual Homeless Outreach Population Estimate (HOPE) on January 31, 2011, from 10:30 PM – 4:00 AM. It’s a unique volunteer opportunity that will take a few hours of your time. HOPE produces a point-in-time estimate of the unsheltered chronic street homeless population in New York City. The information gathered by volunteers during HOPE 2011 is critical to measuring the ongoing efforts to overcome street homelessness at DHS and their partner agencies. We need approximately 3,000 volunteers to help survey the number of homeless individuals living on city streets, under bridges, in parks and in other public places.

Registration for the event is online by clicking the HOPE logo on the Homeless Services website at www.nyc.gov/dhs. Volunteers are needed throughout the city, but we especially need more volunteers at our Bay Ridge site at PS 102, 211 72nd Street.

All volunteers will start and end the night at the site they choose and will be trained. Please encourage friends, family and colleagues who may be interested in volunteering a few hours of their time on Monday, January 31, 2011, to help the homeless.

If you need more information, call the HOPE Helpline at (212) 607-5366, or send them an email at HOPE@dhs.nyc.gov.

FACTS:

Volunteers are asked to show up at the site at which they register at 10:30pm.

From approx 10:45pm-12:00am all volunteers will participate in training (explaining how the maps should be read, what to do in certain situations to encourage folks to come inside, etc)

Each group will be between 3 and 5 people.

Smaller groups can be paired with other smaller groups.

The Count officially begins at 12:15am where groups will be leaving the training site to head to their coverage area and then conducting the count.

Groups will need to return to the training site with their surveys so we can begin to code the information.

No group should finish later than 4am (most will finish in the 2:30-3am hour)

Count is conducted in CODE BLUE weather (we need people out there more than ever in freezing temps to help ID chronic clients etc)

Count is conducted rain/shine (as per HUD) however there are some blizzard exceptions which we would have to then postpone HOPE until the next week (this has never occurred in the past).