Thousands of volunteers are expected to hit the streets Monday night for the annual count of the city’s homeless.
The count – now in its fourth year – is an effort to help the city track its progress in getting New Yorkers off the streets.
For the first time last year, all five boroughs were included in the count.
More than 2500 volunteers will scour areas like parks, streets and subway stations and record the number of homeless New Yorkers they find.
"We want to come out on a cold winter night to make sure that we’re counting the chronic homeless people who are living on our streets and to find out how many there are and where they are," said the Deputy Commissioner of the Department of Homeless Services
Once again this year volunteers will also run into some decoys, posing as homeless people to help test the accuracy of the count.
Critics, however, say the count itself is inaccurate, because it doesn’t include people living in cars, abandoned buildings, or other hidden places.
