Pasadena Needs Volunteers for Its January Homeless Count

Sign up by Jan. 5 to work one night shift and one dawn shift. Last winter's count found 577 people homeless in Pasadena.

On a January night, teams of four or five volunteers will walk their assigned parts of Pasadena, counting the people sleeping outside and handing out cold-weather supplies.

Registration for the 2027 Pasadena Homeless Count is open, and the deadline is Jan. 5, the city announced Nov. 6. The count is run by the city and the Pasadena Partnership to End Homelessness. The evening shift runs 8 to 10 p.m. on Wednesday, Jan. 20. The morning shift starts at 6 a.m. Thursday and ends at 8. Volunteers have to work both. The shifts are short. The alarm clock isn't.

What those teams bring back adds up to a number. Last winter's count found 577 people homeless in Pasadena on one night, about the same as in 2025, according to the city's count site. The mix shifted, though: the unsheltered count dropped 6%, and the sheltered count rose 7%. Of the people found outside, 29% had been affected by the Eaton Fire, and 76% had close ties to Pasadena.

The city has been doing this longer than almost anybody. Pasadena held its first dedicated homeless count in 1992, which made it California's first city to do so and one of the nation's first three, Pasadena Now reported. The streak has one gap: in 2021, the pandemic scrubbed the outdoor count. Thirty-five years on, the count still depends on neighbors willing to get up before dawn.

Anyone signing up has to be at least 18, and there's a required orientation, held online, on the night of Jan. 13. Sign-up is at bit.ly/PasadenaHomelessCount, and questions go to HomelessCount@CityOfPasadena.net.

Last January, about 200 people turned out, and nearly half had never done it before, Pasadena Now reported. Volunteers recorded their surveys on a mobile app built by the city's IT department. Police covered the freeway embankments, parks and other hard-to-reach spots. Public health teams working with Huntington Hospital offered flu, COVID-19 and hepatitis A shots along the way.

The city doesn't claim the figure is perfect. Its count site says no method catches everyone and that an undercount is possible, especially of unsheltered families and young people on their own. Still, the grant money for homeless services gets divided up by federal, state and county funders based on that tally, Pasadena Now reported. And that number gets made between 8 p.m. and 8 a.m. by whoever signs up.

Source: cityofpasadena.net, retrieved November 9, 2026. Other sources: pasadenahomelesscount.org, pasadenanow.com.