This past week in class was unique in the sense that we were able to listen to different speakers. On Monday, we had the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department come in who are a part of the Homeless Outreach Program in San Bernardino. We also had a Skype conference with call with two experts who specialize in homeless counts. Both sets of speakers were incredibly interesting and I was able to learn a lot more information from them. From the San Bernardino Sheriffs’ I learned a lot about different costs. I did not realize that instead of dialing “911” when you encounter a homeless person and think something may be wrong, you should dial “211,” which is a homeless outreach program who will send someone to help. The reason to call the “211” number is because it cost tax payers less money. I know I was completely unaware, as I am sure many other people are, the cost for emergency vehicles just to respond to a call and not utilize anything but their vehicles. If you call “911” about a homeless person, they more than likely will dispatch an ambulance, fire truck, and police officer. I learned that just to run a fire truck it cost $300 each time they turn it one. That is a lot of money and more often then not the homeless person is just sleeping because they do not want sleep at night because it can be dangerous. Also, according to the San Bernardino fire station they receive on average 15 calls a day and half of them are for homeless. That is over $2,000 that is being used just on a fire truck alone to respond to a call they probably are not needed for. While talking to the homeless count experts, I learned how much money went into homeless counts. It can be anywhere from $1,000 to nearly a million dollars. I was surprised by this because I do not understand why it cost this much. I personally do not understand why the money they are using towards homeless counts, if it truly is that expensive, why they cannot use that money to build more shelters or even just provide a meal to the homeless instead. If I was homeless I personally would rather have money used to buy me a meal rather then it being to train someone to put down a tally mark when they walk past me once a year.