The homeless advocates started their count in the frigid early morning hours, filling out forms for each day laborer without money for a room, for each struggling mother and child living in the shelter, for each man and woman waiting in line for lunch.
In the afternoon, they combed the back alleys of Frederick, then fanned out into the woods, tramping down icy deer paths with their clipboards. They sought the people who they knew were missing, to offer them blankets, to ask them about their homelessness, to count them.
Arthur Mayne lives in a 10-by-10-foot toolshed, donated to him by a church, in a wooded area of Frederick. Last week's homeless count marked the fifth annual effort to take a "snapshot" of the region's homeless population.
(Photos Ricky Carioti -- The Washington Post)
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They found the couple living in a neat tent who said they were waiting for disability. They saw the man shaving in the snow who wouldn't speak to them. They met Arthur Mayne, living in a toolshed with a collection of model cars. Deep in the woods, in a small tent, they found Roland Keeney, hidden under blankets.
He said he suffers from a panic disorder and has frightening attacks.
"I get them in the soup kitchen, in the library, in the drop-in center," said Keeney, 46. "I get them out here, but nobody can see me."
It is especially easy for the homeless to disappear in a rural place such as Frederick, said Todd Johnson of the Frederick Community Action Agency, who has coordinated the count here for the past three years.
"In the city, you see people sleeping on grates," he said Friday. Here in the outlying places, 30 or 40 miles from Washington, there are no grates.
Last week's count marked the fifth year in an effort, coordinated by the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments, to take an annual snapshot of the region's homeless population and learn more about what causes the problem. Last year, the regional survey counted 14,537 homeless people. Agencies that serve them say many factors contribute to homelessness: rising housing costs, low-wage jobs, untreated addiction, domestic violence, and mental and physical disabilities. The results of this year's count are expected in the spring.
The findings will become part of a national count held in the last week of January and required by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development of jurisdictions that receive federal funds to serve the homeless.
But the counting is a challenge because in the suburbs and rural places, especially, the problem is not obvious.
"It's kind of like the hidden homeless," Johnson said. Although this is the first year Frederick has participated in the regional count, city advocates have been doing their own count for several years. Last year, Johnson and others counted 244 adults and 316 children who were homeless in Frederick and the surrounding county.
Johnson, 45, knows where to look. He has always lived in Frederick, and he remembers becoming aware of the local homeless population in the 1980s, about the same time homelessness evolved into a national issue after the decision to move the mentally ill out of institutions, major cuts in public housing and the crack epidemic.
Homelessness has been easier to find in the cities, but it's everywhere, said Montgomery County Council member Michael Knapp (D-Upcounty). He sees it in his rural district, not so many miles from the mansions of Potomac.
"In the Upcounty, it's typically a single mother and her kid -- sometimes because of domestic violence, sleeping on somebody's floor. . . . It's not anything people can see."
