Santa Clara County on Wednesday is gearing up to count the number of unhoused residents, and this time it’s paying people who’ve lived on the streets to help. This year, those paid workers along with hundreds of trained volunteers and outreach teams will go around the county to not only count how many people are living unhoused but also try to find out why. The workers will connect the unhoused residents with an app to perform surveys rather than going back and surveying them weeks later as they’ve done in the past. Supportive Housing Director KJ Kaminski says that critical information will help move the unhoused community forward. “There is no perfect way to count every person in the community and while numbers are a piece of the puzzle, and important, what we really want to know is what are the causes of homelessness; how can we better use our resources and our programs to address them,” Kaminski said. “Not only those causes but provide resources they need to exit homelessness and become housed.” During the last “point in time” count in 2023, Santa Clara County had more than 9,900 people living on the steets or in temporary shelters, the highest of the nine Bay Area counties.