This week we listened to two presentations from individuals who are experts in their field. The first presentation we listened to an individual named Ed Torres. He spoke to the class about Redlands Round Table on Homelessness. He spoke about how his goal is to acquire buildings to utilize them for services for homeless individuals. These buildings would be utilized as an intake center, community garden, and shelter. He and his team are attempting to acquire these buildings from the city, from my understanding. They have created a map that details which buildings belong to whom and the specific codes that must be met for each categorized area. Their goal is to meet all of the requirements for these facilities to successfully obtain these permits and rights to run their facilities.

The second individual we heard from was Peter Connery. Peter is one of the leaders in Point in Time Counts. He gave the class details on how they perform these counts and some of the surprising statistics behind today’s homeless. One surprising fact that Peter had stated was while working in the field he had learned of a one university town that had over 200 students who were identified as homeless. He continued by stating that these individuals would sleep in common areas, the library and even in the woods. This was shocking to me because if the simple fact that this is such a small population but there is such a staggering number of individuals who are homeless. It is also saddening that these individuals are in the same stage of life as our class. They are all students just attempting to better their lives, but they are in this horrible situation.