INGHAM COUNTY - The Lansing area Point in Time Count took place at the end of January. The count was meant to find out the number of homeless people in Lansing, a number which is then reported to the Department of Housing and Urban Development which in turn gives the city money to fund homeless aid programs. Volunteers lead the night time count and also shared information with the homeless regarding shelters nearby.

"At this point i'd say every shelter that houses single adults has some outreach to the community to let people know that they're there make sure people know they can come in from the cold and that they should not try to make it out there when its 10 degrees below zero," says Susan Cancro, Executive Director of Advent House, A shelter in Lansing.

The Greater Lansing area has a number of day shelters such as Advent House which provide support, food, and an escape from the cold to locals in need. There are also night time family shelters such as Haven House in East Lansing and other shelters for single adults.

All of these programs contribute information to the final Point in Time Count, but because of the different situations under which people are homeless, the exact number is hard to calculate according to Dr. Joan Jackson Johnson, Director of the Human Relations and Community Service Department in Lansing.

"The shelter beds that we have are 200 plus. So we know we can never get all of the people in and we realize that some people couch surf, we realize that families will tolerate other family members for a limited period of time," she says.

Another problem, according to Dr. Johnson, is that the amount of beds and resources available for the Lansing homeless are drawing attention from residents of surrounding communities who have fallen on hard times.

" One of the challenges that we face is being a part of the Tri-County area, Clinton, Eaton and Ingham county, the word is out that Lansing has a few more resources and that we do a little bit more and so we have people coming in from the out counties. One of the things were going to try to do is redirect them."

Meridian Township itself does not have homeless shelters but there are a number of food banks as well as programs in place such as the Emergency Needs Fund which sets out to prevent homelessness.