How many people in Orange County are homeless as of this year? And, what is being done for those who experience homelessness? These were only a few questions discussed at the Homelessness Orientation at the Seymour Center Tuesday evening.

The orientation was led by Corey Root. She’s the Homeless Programs Coordinator for Orange County. She says the purpose of the orientation is to educate community members on what programs are available to combat homelessness, and which of those programs are changing.

“There’s a staff that comes together that really tries to connect folks with resources, such that they’re not just cycling through the system over and over again. So this is super innovative and really cool.”

What Root is describing is a new system of placing those who are homeless with places they can go and programs that can help them. She says in the past, the system was made to be one-size-fits-all. And now, Orange County Partnership to End Homelessness – or OCPEH – is working on a more tailored approach to fit each person who reaches out for help.

“It’s thinking about, okay, if I were someone who is in crisis and maybe frontal lobe’s not fully functioning at this point for various reasons, what would this situation look like to me?”

Root also addressed this year’s point-in-time count. It’s an evaluation of the number of people who experience homelessness in Orange County. This year, the number dropped down to 80 people. She says this could be because OCPEH has helped almost 50 more people than last year. But, maybe not.

“Are there people here that we’re not finding? Is that one reason that the numbers are down? Are there people that were here that were part of some of those numbers but they’ve gone somewhere else?”

No matter the reason, OCPEH says they will continue working to accurately identify the number of homeless people in Orange County, and they will continue working to perfect and fund the new, personalized system of support.

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