Dharm Makwana

More than 300 people were trained Monday night on how to hold a conversation with the homeless.

The session held at First Baptist Church is the last step for volunteers who will conduct a homeless count on March 22-23 for City of Vancouver designed to provide council with updated information to revise its Homeless Action Plan.

“We want to see what we’re missing,” said Judy Graves, City of Vancouver Tenant Assistance Program coordinator. “If you’re getting too proud of what you’ve done and you don’t look at the piece that you’re missing you can’t correct for that.”

Volunteers, responsible for working two to three hour shifts, learned how to screen people they encounter, determine their perceived barriers to housing and collect other information, such as age, gender and time spent living on the streets, for the street census.

A similar one-day snapshot of Vancouver’s homeless population taken in spring 2008 found 1,576 people living on the street. Across the region 2,660 people were identified as homeless.

Vancouver fast-tracked an emergency shelter program in December 2008 to address the need for more safe spaces to sleep.

The count will cost the city $70,000 which covers the cost of volunteers, coordinator positions and analysts who will file a report to council this April.