Sonoma County’s Homeless Rate is Three Times the National Average

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los-angeles-homeless

Homeless men sort through their belongings on a traffic island near downtown Los Angeles on Thursday, Aug. 18, 2016. With two weeks left in the state legislative session, county officials from across California continued Wednesday to press Gov. Jerry Brown to declare homelessness a state of emergency. (AP Photo/Richard Vogel)

Here’s a shocking number: Sonoma County’s homeless rate is about three times the national average.
In January, a homeless count identified a total of just over three-thousand-one-hundred homeless residents with about one-thousand in shelters and just over two thousand living with no shelter. Sonoma County’s population sits at about 500-thousand.When someone on the street asks for money or food, Continuum of Care, a program working to end homelessness, says the most helpful response is to suggest the person call 2-1-1 to get connected to a range of services.