Last modified on Thu 21 Jan 2021 16.13 EST
The first time Kirk McClain helped with the homeless count in King county, Washington, he himself had been living unsheltered for five years. He said he remembers stepping out at 2am on a surprisingly warm day in January 2014 along with the handful of others he was paired with, and the surreal feeling of looking under bridges and along a highway to search for those living in parallel circumstances to his own.
After three hours, his group identified about 30 people living unsheltered across a 2sq mile stretch of Burien, a small city just south of Seattle, interviewing some about how long they had been homeless, the services they had received, as well as asking them for their age, race and gender.