Hundreds of volunteers fanned out across the five boroughs before dawn Wednesday, canvassing subway stations, sidewalks, pedestrian plazas and parks for the 21st annual Homeless Outreach Population Estimate, known as the HOPE count.

The count, which surveys unhoused New Yorkers across all five boroughs, was rescheduled from its original late January date because of the extreme cold that gripped the city this winter. That made this the first HOPE count in its history conducted when temperatures were not near or below freezing. The rescheduling caused a drop in volunteer participation, a city spokesperson acknowledged, but nearly 1,300 people still showed up Tuesday night alongside 240 outreach workers.

For Erin Dalton, recently appointed commissioner of the Department of Social Services, the event marked her first public appearance in the role. She joined volunteers at the kickoff inside the P.S. 116 gym in Kips Bay. “This is a great experience to be with volunteers, outreach workers, people really care about the issues of homelessness,” she said.

The count comes as the city is wrestling with the scale of its homelessness crisis. More than 85,000 unhoused New Yorkers sought space in city shelters. Last January’s HOPE count, taken on Jan. 28, 2025, found 4,504 people experiencing unsheltered homelessness. This year’s figures won’t be available immediately, but the data will shape how the city allocates resources and calibrates its outreach strategy.

The stakes are unusually high this year. More than 20 people were found dead outside during this winter’s historically brutal cold, putting enormous pressure on the city’s shelter and outreach policies. Critically, none of those who died were found living in encampments, and not all were technically unhoused. Still, the deaths prompted sharp criticism of Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s decision to halt encampment sweeps, a policy he announced in December, arguing the sweeps had not been effective at connecting people to stable, long-term housing.

Mamdani subsequently reversed course. The new approach puts Department of Homeless Services outreach workers in the lead role, sidelining the police and sanitation workers who previously drove the sweep operations. Dalton framed the shift as a meaningful change in philosophy rather than just logistics. “Let’s focus on those who are most vulnerable, people who’ve decided they’re not going to accept traditional options,” she said. “They are traumatized by the services they may have received in the past, and they’ve decided, amongst the harshest conditions, to stay outside.”

Whether a worker-led model produces better outcomes than a sweep-and-clear approach has been a subject of debate among advocates and critics for years. What is not in dispute is that traditional shelter options fail a significant portion of the people living outside. Many have histories with the shelter system that left them unwilling to return.

The HOPE count itself grew out of exactly that kind of frustration with inadequate data and policy. Maryanne Schretzman, executive director of the Center for Innovation through Data Intelligence, a city office that coordinates across health and human services agencies, helped launch the count when it began as a pilot in Manhattan and Brooklyn before expanding citywide.

The count does not capture everyone. People sleeping in cars, doubling up with family and friends, or cycling in and out of temporary arrangements are not reflected in the numbers. What the survey does capture, imperfectly but consistently, is a snapshot of those sleeping rough on a given night. That consistency, year over year, is what makes the data useful to policymakers.

This year’s count arrives at a moment when the city cannot afford to look away. The winter deaths were a brutal reminder of what unsheltered homelessness costs people when the system fails them. The HOPE count will add numbers to that story. The harder work, as Dalton and others acknowledged Wednesday morning, is figuring out what to do with them.