NJ survey to count the homeless takes place Wednesday

An annual one day survey this Wednesday will try to get an accurate figure of the number of homeless people living in New Jersey.

Taiisa Kelly, senior Associate with Monarch Housing Associates in Cranford, which conducts the NJ Counts Point in Time survey, said figures are expected to be impacted by the weekend blizzard.

"But, one thing that we have seen that's been consistent is that regardless of the weather, the numbers remain pretty much about the same, and that speaks to the need to really ensure that we are able to increase resources to provide permanent solutions and get people into stable apartments and housing," said Kelly.

The county by county results are submitted in April to the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) which creates a formula used to determine awards for competitive federal grant funding, according to Kelly. The funding is distributed by the Continuum of Care.

Volunteer street teams will seek homeless to be counted, but Kelly admitted that unless the homeless actually come forward or are willing to participate in the survey, they are not includes in the count.

"We know it's not a fully accurate count, but it's kind of the best we have for a one-day count," Kelly said.

In 2015, Ocean County had about 603 homeless adults and children, compared to about 430 in Monmouth County, according to Kelly. She said Monmouth had about 36 people identified as living on the streets, while Ocean had about a dozen. The number of homeless this year are expected to mirror last year's count.

"But, there are a lot more people that are seeking assistance unfortunately, there's also a lot of people that are not able to get assistance, or who do not quality for assistance due to different regulations, so there's probably more people who are living in situations where they're doubled up staying with friends and family, who in that case, we may consider them homeless, but according to according to federal government definitions they are not homeless. So, there's probably going to be a lot of that," explained Kelly.

Kelly added she thinks the number of unsheltered will be less in 2016 due to the weekend storm and the amount of snow on the ground.

Somebody who is homeless is defined as an individual who is either living on the streets or somebody whose staying in a physical shelter, an emergency shelter that's developed to provide temporary sleeping arrangements for a person until they can find some sort of permanent or suitable other arrangements, according to Kelly.

Those living in transitional housing programs also are included in that number. Those programs are designed to serve people for up to 24 months and provide intensive case management, Kelly explained.

"In New Jersey, because of the way that our homeless system is structured, a lot of people also are placed in hotels or motels. Typically, if they are eligible for welfare temporary assistance for needy families or general assistance, they're also eligible to placed through emergency assistance in local hotels or motels for a short period of time. So if an agency is paying for your motel stays, then you are considered homeless in New Jersey,"

In New New Jersey, Essex County received about $7 million last year in HUD grants, the highest in the state, according to Kelly. Ocean County received about $500,000 while, Monmouth received about $1.3 million, according to Kelly.

She explained the amount is based on how counties or regions have applied for funding in the past.

"The way that the HUD program used to work is that if you applied for permanent housing money, you could actually kind of grow the amount of money that you're applying for year after year exponentially, so if you applied for $500,00 this year and you put it all towards permanent housing, then next year you could apply again for $500,000 and you could keep going for many years," said Kelly.

That is how Monmouth was able to accumulate a lot of funding that way, according to Kelly.

"The other way that communities have done it is, they've put some of the money some of the money towards permanent housing and some of it toward services. When you apply for services than you do not have the ability to expand on that pot of money. So, depending on how you are using the HUD money, it impacts how much money that you would have for anything new. So, communities use the HUD money in many different ways throughout the years, and because of the way that Monmouth County used the money, they were able to expand their total pot of money that was coming into the community over the years," Kelly said.

Monmouth has two shelters. The Jersey Shore Rescue Mission and the Adult Shelter run by the County, according to Kelly.