LOS ANGELES — The Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority opened volunteer registration Wednesday for its 2023 Greater Los Angeles Homeless Count. People who would like to help the agency in their annual tally of unhoused individuals can sign up at TheyCountWillYou.org. Next year’s count will take place during the evenings of Jan. 24, 25 and 26.

“The annual homeless count helps us better understand the needs of our neighbors experiencing homelessness, so that we can align our resources to best address those needs,” LAHSA interim executive director Stephen David Simon said in a statement. “We need thousands of people across the county to join us in January to ensure as accurate a count as possible.”

LAHSA is looking for enough volunteers to cover 8,000 shifts.

The 2022 Greater LA Homeless Count estimated that 69,144 people were experiencing homelessness at the time it was conducted over three nights in February. The number marked a 4.1% increase compared with 2020, when the last count was conducted. Homelessness in the city of Los Angeles increased 1.7% to 41,980. 

With the exception of 2021, LAHSA has conducted an annual count of its homeless population since 2016 in an effort to develop solutions and allocate funding, but it has come under fire in recent years for under counting. Earlier this month, the Los Angeles City Council voted to conduct a multi-year audit of previous years' counts and to explore whether a third party should be in charge of tallying LA’s unhoused individuals.

In a statement, LAHSA said it has made improvements to the 2023 count to make sure the estimate is as accurate as possible. Next year’s count will use an app called Esri’s Homeless Point in Time. Volunteers who experience problems with that app and need to record their tallies on paper will give the information to a LAHSA staff member to enter in an electronic database. 

For the 2023 count, LAHSA said thousands of volunteers will be dispatched over LA County’s 4,000 square miles. Volunteers will travel in groups of four to count the number of people who are unsheltered and living in tents, vehicles and make-shift accommodations.

The count will take place in three stages. On Jan. 24, volunteers will count unsheltered individuals in the San Fernando and San Gabriel valleys. On Jan. 25, they will conduct a count in East and West LA. On Jan. 26, the count will conclude with tallies in the Antelope Valley, Metro and South Los Angeles.