Louis Virgin carefully wheeled his new bicycle through a crowd on the Pensacola Bay Center show floor, pausing monetarily to balance a bag full of flyers and pamphlets on one of the handlebars.
He had just won the bike in a raffle a few moments earlier, and he scoffed at a question of whether the bike would be helpful.
“You know it’s going to help,” he said. “I got no car. No bus ticket. It’s got to help.”
Virgin was one of nearly 200 people Thursday who participated in the You-Count Homeless Connect, a one-day, one-stop shop at the Bay Center to deliver services and resources to people experiencing homelessness in our community. The event was held in conjunction with the annual point-in-time count, a census of the people in Escambia and Santa Rosa counties who experienced homelessness on a single night in January.
The You-Count event was hosted by Opening Doors Northwest Florida and Escambia County. Martika Baker, the Homeless Management Information System director for Opening Doors Northwest Florida, said both the You-Count event and the PIT count have been expanded this year to provide more services and to reach a wider swath of the community.