On the night of January 26th, volunteers and officials in cities all over the United States fanned out to count the number of homeless people living on the street or in shelters, vehicles, or encampments. This survey, along with an annual count of just those housed in shelters, is mandated by the Department of Housing and Urban Development as a way to provide a snapshot of the U.S.’s homeless population. In California, which accounts for one-fifth of the country’s total homeless population and almost half of those who are unsheltered, the number of homeless people grew by nearly 2,500 between 2015 and 2016. But in contrast to the rest of the state stands Santa Barbara, a coastal city of 90,000. The 2017 count revealed that at least 790 homeless people reside in Santa Barbara, down from 1,040 in 2011, making the city proper the only part of Santa Barbara County to experience a drop in the number of homeless individuals each year.
[For more of this story, written by Kate Wheeling, go to https://psmag.com/how-one-smal...d3c901eef#.w52u2mvvc]
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