St. David's Church in downtown Austin was the meeting place for close to 150 volunteers who spent six hours Tuesday combing the streets of the city to count the people who call the streets home.
"By sampling one out of every ten people we can better understand why they're homeless and work to address those problems", said Richard Morgan one of the volunteers who went out Tuesday.
The homeless count was a multi-agency effort spearheaded by the Community Homeless Coalition also called ECHO.
At last count there were more than 4,400 people identifying themselves as homeless in Austin.
Volunteers divided Austin up into sections in hopes of getting the most accurate count possible. However accuracy is a huge challenge because volunteers aren't canvassing rural areas out in Travis County where some homeless are believed to live.
"In order to get federal funding for H.U.D.and other programs to help correct this problem we have to get an idea of the amount of homeless people on the streets and why they're homeless", said Richard Morgan.
The homeless count was also designed to get a clearer picture of the needs of the homeless.
"How many people we're dealing with, what their needs are, there is a survey portion to this where we're going to find out what their needs are from the population as well as some demographic information", said Rick Rivera with ECHO.
Volunteers worked the downtown area, behind businesses and green spaces where the homeless are known to camp out.
Results of Tuesday's homeless count are expected to be released by mid-February.
