Count: 31 Unsheltered Homeless in Bristol

Searchers that went out early this morning found some homeless people and even more evidence that they're sleeping and living outdoors in the Mum City.
The final tally was 31, which is an educated guess, based on the people they spoke with and the stuff they saw -- tents, bins of belongings, even a doghouse. They found that people were living in Rockwell Park, on the railroad tracks, in the woods, in cars and more.
Marge Rivera, a caseworker at The Salvation Army who helped organize the count, guessed they'd find 13-15 people by looking in all the usual places. She said she was a little surprised to find twice that many. She said they were able to interview eight people. That's a lot compared to the three or four people they spoke with over the winter count in 2009.
The local effort searches typical places where homeless people are known to stay. The statewide point in time count, which tries to count all the unsheltered homeless in a single couple of hours, uses a formula that to me, doesn't make much sense, at least in Bristol.
Anyway, that's not what happened today. They looked in all the usual places and found more than they expected.
For the record, the 31 were men and women, no children. At least one veteran. Ages 20 to mid-50s. Three of them will be in the Bristol Emergency Shelter this evening. Others wanted no part of the place.

Searching for Bristol's Homeless At the Crack of Dawn

A dedicated bunch of people are getting up early Wednesday and going out searching for people who live on the streets, in the parks, behind the shopping centers and other places homeless people sleep in Bristol.
Marge Rivera, a Salvation Army caseworker who is helping to lead the count, expects to find 13-15 people on the streets.
They're going out from 5-7 a.m., which is even earlier than most chamber of commerce functions.
Unlike the statewide "point in time" count typically done on a cold winter night, this is a local count only, and one done in the early morning, in warm weather.
Besides places where they think people might be sleeping, including under the bridge by Tinty's, inside Rockwell Park and behind several Bristol grocery stores, they'll also be scoping out the coffee and donut places like Dunkin' Donuts and McDonald's to see if they can find anyone there.
I wrote a story about this for Wednesday's edition of The Bristol Press (http://www.bristolpress.com/) and plan to follow up with another story after the count to let you all know what they learned.