Down for the Cause.

As I have mentioned before, my internship is with BronxWorks Homeless Outreach Team. I work with street homeless adults, to get permanent housing. I currently have 12 clients. One of which I just moved into his apartment (nice!) another with a submitted housing package, and 2 others on their way as well. It's a lot of work, but I have honestly never cared about, or believed in a social service agency as much as I do BronxWorks. The commitment to the homeless by DHS (dept. of Homeless Services) and my agency is amazing. It funny because I know me.... and sometimes I surprise myself by how much I care about my clients.

So, Tomorrow night is the annual Hope Count in New York City, and I'm going to be participating, at the Lehman College site. I'll be working with my supervisor (who I'm still trying to make out with) as a Team Leader.

What it is: from 10pm on Monday, to 4am on Tuesday morning, the volunteers are all split up into different zones throughout the prospective boroughs. They have to comb through the area, surveying for homeless people. If you find someone, of course you'd get all their information and then refer the for service. The catch is that DHS has decoy homeless people placed through the zones--- so like, if you miss a decoy, you suck at outreach and your borough starts to rack up points. You want a low number, You want to find everyone.

Afterwards, The number found is calculated and ran through some crazy math algorithm to decide exactly how many street homeless individuals are in the area. Duh, you want a low score, and you want to show a decrease in people in the street.

This is so important on so many levels.... but primarily, people should not be living in the street.
We have had a ton of placements this month alone, and really, the streets seem pretty clear. The fact that it's going to rain tomorrow night will help keep people off the street, but it's a little warm, at 37 degrees...so, we'll see. I'm pretty excited.

So, Tomorrow night I'll be doing tunnels, bridges, abandon cars, and any where else that would make decent shelter on a rainy January Night. I hope to get some pictures, which I'll totally post.


More about Hope Count here. oh, and here.
To read about how HOT did last year, check it out here.





Image via NYC.gov