It was hours before sunrise as 110 participants fanned out across Marin during the biennial point-in-time count to document the number of homeless people in the county. The 2024 survey identified 1,090 unhoused individuals.
Those conducting the count included elected officials and employees from cities and towns in Marin, staff from the county and community organizations and people with lived homelessness experience. All received training and area maps in the days leading up to the event. Their assignment was to capture quantitative data by observation only—no outreach.
On Jan. 28, beginning at 5am, teams of two to four people searched each of Marin’s 62 census tracts for vehicles, tents, abandoned buildings and isolated sites that may provide a place for an unhoused person to lay their head. The early start was by design, with the counting concluded by about 10am…