Each year the Homeless Leadership Coalition does its best to coordinate the counting of the number of people without shelter in Central Oregon.

This year the count took place Jan. 23-30 in Deschutes, Jefferson and Crook counties as well as on the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs lands. The final results of the count will be released in the spring.

In Redmond, the count is a citywide coordination that helps provders get valuable information and data on the homeless population. In addition to the outreach site on E Antler Avenue, volunteers and service providers at local homeless shelters and at organizations like J Bar J Youth Services. County and state organizations all work to contribute to the count.

In years past, service providers have cruised the back streets of Redmond and out on the stretch of BLM land east of town in an attempt to find people who live there. The daunting task makes it difficult to know exactly how many people are homeless in the area.

On a soggy morning near the BLM land to the east of Redmond off of E Antler Avenue, a group of Redmond’s homeless queued up for a warm cup of coffee, some groceries and some other supplies. Service providers and volunteers also gathered information from participants as part of a voluntary survey.

Service providers and volunteers said it is pretty much impossible to count all the homeless people in Redmond, let alone all of Central Oregon. While the count is a requirement to access much-needed federal funding, service providers said they simply don’t have enough resources to get an accurate count. It is also likely that many homeless people who would have normally come to access services, decided not to as weather snow, rain and poor weather some days made the count even less accurate than usual.

“It is just a snapshot,” said Eliza Wilson, chair of the Homelessness Leadership Coalition board of directors. “It is not meant to be 100% accurate.”

Colleen Thomas, homeless outreach services supervisor for the Deschutes County Health Services Behavioral Health department, was out in the rain on Jan. 26. She said last year the count found about 1,300 people in Central Oregon who were experiencing homelessness. In Redmond, they could only verify about 200 people living without shelter.

“That definitely is a huge undercount. Huge undercount. And we know that there are more people out there that we have not had a chance to collect the data on,” Thomas said. “I definitely think one important piece of the Point-In-Time count is it is only a snapshot of our overall population, because it is voluntary and we can’t meet everybody. And there might be people that are living in their vehicles and in places we may not be collecting surveys.”

One woman who gave her name as Sam Jonez, 60, chose to participate in the count. She said she’s been homeless and living on Bureau of Land Management property east of Redmond since 2019. Jonez said she is still considered a newcomer by others who have spent far more time than she has out among the junipers.

“There are a lot of people who don’t come out to this kind of stuff,” Jonez said. “And I want to be one of the ones to come so I can get help.”

Jonez said she thinks the count is important, and she trusts the service providers and volunteers who come with aid.

Jonez said she currently has 14 baby pigeons, 12 cats a goat and a chihuahua, which makes it hard for her to get into housing. While she does get money from Social Security, it doesn’t get her to the end of the month. The food for her pets costs around $375 a month, and she says she must regularly buy new tents to sleep in because they get destroyed by the elements and by her goat. 

“The goat puts her horns in them a lot,” said Jonez.

Jonez said she can’t live without her animals, even if it would make it easier for her to find housing.

“It is kind of hard for me because I have a lot of critters,” Jonez said. “It is kind of hard to house me, so they are trying to find me something … maybe on a ranch where I can help somebody and stay at the same time.”

Jonez says she prefers tents to motorhomes, because she gets claustrophobic in them.

Another survey participant was Glen Gray. Gray was born and raised in Prineville and had been homeless for 15 years until he recently got a coveted spot at Oasis Village, the new transitional housing village for people experiencing homelessness in Redmond.

Gray said he has been trying to get into housing for years, but that the system is difficult to navigate and rents are far too expensive.

“Rough. Really rough,” he said about what it is like trying to get into housing. “I have a limited amount of income and rent is really high.”

Gray, with a plastic bag of food and supplies in hand, headed back to his new home at Oasis Village, where he has access to a large, new kitchen, clean bathrooms, and a warm community area. He had a message for the community upon his departure.

“God’s watching out over all of us,” Gray said.