The U.S. Department
of Housing and Urban Development and Grammy Award-winning singer and
songwriter Cyndi Lauper are joining the effort to
“Make Everyone Count,”
a national campaign to support local one-night counts of homeless
persons
and families. Cyndi Lauper and the True Colors Fund’s Forty to None
Project produced a national public service announcement to encourage
viewers to contribute their time to gather needed data on the scale of
homelessness throughout the U.S.
During the last
10 days in January, HUD asks more than 3,000 cities and counties to
conduct “Point-in-Time” counts of homeless persons that reveal the
number of persons in shelters
and on the streets on a given night. Ultimately, these one-night
counts provide local planners with data they need to understand the
number and characteristics of persons who are homeless so they, in turn,
can develop a thoughtful response to confront homelessness.
“We’re thrilled to have Cyndi join us in this national campaign to
expand our understanding of homelessness and to accomplish that, we need
people power,” said HUD Secretary Shaun
Donovan. “You can’t solve a problem without understanding it.
President Obama has set an ambitious goal to end homelessness as we know
it and this effort is critical toward reaching this goal.”
Lauper,
co-founder of the True Colors Fund, said, “The True Colors Fund is proud
to work with HUD through our Forty to None Project to raise awareness
about the important count of homeless people
that occurs every January. Every day across America, people struggle
to overcome homelessness and we as a society need to join together to
ensure that we do all that we can to help them. The first step in being
able to do that is to understand how many people
are actually in need. I encourage everyone to get involved and be a
part of this important effort so that we can make sure that everyone
counts.”
This
year, volunteers will collect more detailed information about their
local homeless populations including more precise age data, the number
of homeless children in families, and even the gender
of homeless veterans. In an effort to better count and serve homeless
youth, HUD changed its data collection requirements for 2013 to better
identify homeless children and youth. Additionally, HUD is engaged with
the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness,
the Department of Health and Human Services, and the Department of
Education in a special nine-city initiative called
Youth Count! to evaluate best practices for counting homeless
youth.
In the joint
public service announcement,
Lauper describes why the HUD’s Annual Point-in-Time count is a vital
step towards better serving our homeless population and ultimately
ending homelessness once and
for all. Visit HUD’s website or www.fortytonone.org to
learn more about how you can help. In addition, interested people can
also participate in an ongoing Twitter conversation #EveryoneCounts.
