More than 600 volunteers began counting the number of homeless people in Greater Vancouver on Monday evening.
Volunteers are scouring the Lower Mainland and Fraser Valley through the early hours and all day on Tuesday to count the number of people in the region's shelters, safe houses and transition houses.
The goal of the 2008 Homeless Count is to gather an estimate of the population, get an idea of the demographic profile and to identify trends. The data will be used for planning and policy development.
The Regional Steering Committee on Homelessness invests in the counts to help with its regional homeless plan.
Robyn Newton, manager of research of the Social Planning and Research Council of B.C. spoke to CTV News.
"We do know that there are more shelter beds," she said. "So we will ... find more sheltered homeless. One of the things we saw between 2002 and 2005 is more people on the streets, so that was significant."
The official count occurs every three years.
The last count in 2005 found the number of homeless people had nearly doubled since 2002.
Funding is provided by the federal government's Homelessness Partnership Strategy, the Vancouver Foundation, and United Way of the Lower Mainland.
Preliminary findings from this year's count are expected to be released on April 8th.
