They count. Will you?

At last count, some 42,694 homeless men, women and children were struggling on the streets of Los Angeles County.

That last count was two years ago. The next count begins later this month, when cities and counties across the nation—Los Angeles among them—will take to the recession-wracked sidewalks, shelters, hospitals, jails and underpasses in a crucial, federally mandated effort to attach hard numbers to the vexing issue of homelessness.

To that end, the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, which conducts the biennial head count for the city and county, is looking for a few thousand sharp-eyed volunteers. Enumerators will be asked to donate five hours during the week nights of January 25-27, or during the morning of January 27, to fan out across the county in search of homeless people and help document their existence. Training and security will be provided; volunteers won’t interact with the homeless, just observe and tally.

“We need 4,000 people,” says LAHSA Communications Director Calvin J. Fortenberry, noting that the opportunity is open to any volunteer over 18.

“These counts are aimed at assessing the severity of the problem here and then moving people into housing. It’s a unique volunteer experience, one that goes beyond the usual clothing or food drive.”

 The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development has required the count since 2005 as a condition for federal funding for homeless programs, despite the inherent difficulties in tracking people who, by definition, have no fixed address.

The challenge is particularly tough in Los Angeles County—a metropolis the size of Rhode Island and Delaware put together—but the data have offered one of the few sources of hard information on the issue, and the count has helped local authorities determine how best to allocate services for the homeless.

The 2009 count revealed, for instance, that two-thirds of the area’s homeless had no shelter, that about a quarter were mentally ill, that a third were women and that about one in six were veterans. It also confirmed that homelessness extends well beyond Skid Row to every corner of the county.

At the same time, however, it indicated that although the homeless population in Greater L.A. remains the nation’s largest, the problem appears to be shrinking.  Volunteers counted 88,345 homeless people in 2005, but found only 68,808 in 2007 and just 42,694 in 2009—a drop of nearly 52% in four years even though the area was reeling from financial collapse and record foreclosures. Some of that drop, however, can be attributed to a shift in the count methodologies. In the first counts, the results relied mostly on extrapolations. More recently, there have been growing efforts to increase the accuracy of those numbers by conducting full counts–an effort requiring even more volunteers.

Some advocates for the homeless took issue, concerned both that the statistics were not reflecting the demand they were experiencing on the front lines, and that falling numbers might translate into diminished funding.

Fortenberry says all this just underscores the importance of the count in 2011.

“This is all the more reason to get involved,” he says. “We’re focusing on the need, and the need is more than 40,000 people with no permanent place to live.”

Interested in helping? Click here, or contact LAHSA at (213) 225-8433 or go to theycountwillyou.org.