Doing the math on the homeless problem in St. John's

Volunteers with aSt. John's organization will be in the streets this week trying to get an accurate count of a subset of the city's population who often go uncounted and unnoticed the homeless.

"There are places around, not too far from here, where there are people with tarps in wooded areas and they're staying there overnight in the conditions we are having," said Shawn Skinner, chair of End Homelessness St. John's.

Over 100 volunteers set out Wednesday night to "hot spots" around the city to locate and count people living without shelter, and they'll continue their efforts on Thursday night.

Skinner says the volunteers work with frontline organizations who know where people go when they haven't got any shelter.

They also visit people in hospitals, shelters and prisons.

"People, when they're discharged frompublic facilities like this, often times are discharged into homelessness," he said. "They don't have anywhere to go."

The goal is to get an accurate idea of the city's homeless population, he said, and also compare it to last year's count the first point-in-time count done of the population by the organization to see if things have improved or gotten worse.

• 'Sobering' findings in first-ever count of homeless population in St. John's

Last year's report found that at least 166 people experienced homelessness in St. John's, including 38 youth between the ages 16-24.

According to the data, Indigenous people,those who identify as part of theLGBTQ community, and those who had involvement with Child Protection Services had a disproportionately high representation in those numbers.

Homelessness has many causes

There are a lot of reasons why people end up sleeping under a tarp in the woods, said Skinner, withpoverty,family violenceand drug addiction among them.

"Mental health, obviously, is a big part of it," he said.

Mental health, obviously, is a big part of it.- Shawn Skinner

"Our job is toprovide not just a place for them to live, but to provide supports that they can have tocontinue to allow them to remain in a stable housed environment."

Some of those people have chosen tosleep outsiderather than go to a shelter, he said, "as hard as people may find that to understand."

"Our message, though, is that there are alternatives," he said. "And when they're ready to seek those alternatives, we need to be ready be able to provide and support and help them."

Though Skinnersaid homelessness is a growing issue in the city, there is progress being made.

"And it's important that we keep the momentum going."