Volunteers across Brevard County Monday conducted a headcount on the local homeless population, a Housing and Urban Development initiative designed to better assist the homeless population.

“We’re going out and we’re counting people. We’ll be in the woods, in the food pantries. We’ll be everywhere in Brevard County where we might find people,” said Dr. Miriam Moore, Brevard Homeless Coalition’s executive director.

“This is a way to not only draw down federal funding, but it also helps us to gauge what their needs are,” Moore said.

The most recent point-in-time count from 2017 shows there were 845 homeless people living in Brevard County. That number includes hundreds of homeless students, who are sleeping in motels, cars, or are unsheltered.

The study also showed that 187 of Brevard’s homeless are veterans.

Tiffany Majors was among the volunteers scouring the county’s homeless camps for a headcount on the population Monday morning. She and a small crew were looking through camps mostly washed out from Sunday’s heavy rain.

Wooded areas tucked just out of sight showed the tell-tale signs of encampments: palm fronds woven through branches to create a makeshift screen, rain-sodden tents or scattered liquor and pill bottles.

Majors works with Volunteers of America to provide needed services to Brevard’s veteran homeless population. She got into the work because she knows firsthand what it means to be without a home.

“I used to be homeless. I was homeless for a year in the worst part of Atlanta, Georgia,” Majors said. “I was addicted to drugs and I didn’t make the best choices in life.”

Her experience with addiction and homelessness gives her a unique sense of empathy and motivation. Majors insists that no matter what life a person has led, they deserve compassion and a place to live.

“They’re not homeless because it’s great,” she said. “A lot of them have mental health issues and addiction.”