By Amanda Raymond

amanda.raymond@salisburypost.com

Where are you sleeping tonight?

Don’t be surprised if you are stopped tonight or even tomorrow and asked questions about homelessness — it’s for the county’s Point-in-Time count.

Rowan Helping Ministries and other local nonprofit organizations will be conducting the Point-in-Time count Wednesday night and Thursday.

The count is a U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development initiative to determine the number of sheltered and unsheltered homeless people during one night in January.

“We’re just trying to get a snapshot of what homelessness looks like in our county just on that very night,” Sherry Smith, leader of the local effort and director of client services at Rowan Helping Ministries, said.

According an article on the HUD website, the count is also important for determining how far various communities and the country have come in ending veteran homelessness, a goal that was set to be accomplished by 2015.

The count is conducted annually all across the country.

Smith said along with counting people who are sleeping in shelters, agencies and volunteers will also be counting people who slept in places that aren’t suitable for human habitation, such as cars, storage units, warehouses, abandoned buildings, tents, lobbies or 24-hour stores.

“We’re blessed to have other agencies that are willing to help us see what that homeless population is in our county,” she said.

Volunteers will be sent to places like Rowan Helping Ministries’ soup kitchen, the Rowan County Department of Social Services, the Rowan Public Library and Main Street Mission to help count the unsheltered homeless. Volunteers include students from Catawba College and Rowan-Cabarrus Community College.

Volunteers will be talking with both people who are homeless and others who may know someone who is homeless.

On Wednesday night at around 8 or 9 p.m., Smith said, a police officer will escort volunteers to different places around the city to get a count of people sleeping out on the streets.

The Rowan-Salisbury School System will also be helping with the count.

“They can better identify those families inside the school system who are homeless,” Smith said.

Some places where people might have slept will not count them as homeless for this count, including those who slept at their parents’ or friends’ house, jails, hospitals, group homes or rehabilitation centers, Smith said.

Volunteers will ask for the first two initials of the responder’s first and last names, birthdate and race, but other than that the responses are kept anonymous.

Smith said since this is the first time she will be leading the count, it will be interesting to see how it turns out. She said she is hoping that the number is lower than last year, which was 108, because that would mean they are moving towards the goal of ending homelessness in the county.

“It’s going to be interesting to see what the number looks like and the work that we still have to do,” she said.

Contact reporter Amanda Raymond at 704-797-4222.