After a two-day effort to survey Amador County's homeless population, experts say the initial results appear more accurate than a 2007 effort to measure the same problem.

The bad news is that the early numbers are also daunting in their severity.

From Jan. 27 to 29, volunteers from local agencies, community organizations and churches sought out the area's homeless and helped them fill out information for the Central Sierra Continuum of Care, which funds Amador's homeless shelter and other housing programs in the foothills. For those working to protect the county's most invisible people, the results of the survey could mean everything in terms of getting the state and federal funding needed to attack the issue.

In 2007, the first mission to survey area homeless went awry when false reports spread that the effort was actually a narcotics sting, a parole sweep or a retrieval operation by Child Protective Services. Local experts, including workers at the homeless shelter and public health nurses, later feared that the 57 people tallied as officially homeless in Amador were not even a third of the real number.

According to Beetle Barbour, housing director of the Amador-Tuolumne Community Action Agency, the numbers for the new survey will likely be twice that.

"We have a highly trained expert on rural homelessness named Scott Thurmond looking over a results right now," Barbour explained. "The figures won't be official until he gets a chance to decide which survey sheets need to be disqualified because they're doubles or yielding inaccurate information, but I'm pretty comfortable saying the numbers might even be double compared to what they were in 2007."

Barbour credited the experience gained from the previous attempt. "This time we used homeless and former homeless people in our community to help locate and talk to those who wanted to remain unseen," she said. Barbour added that Denise Chase, the director of Amador's homeless shelter, played a huge role in mobilizing the survey.

While Barbour and others who work with the homeless are relieved that new statistics will be closer to reflecting the scope of the problem, there seems to be wide agreement that many homeless people remain uncounted.

"When it comes to finding and counting all of these individuals - many of whom would rather be left alone - Amador County has tremendous geographical issues that make it particularly hard to pull off," Barbour said. "We still think the new numbers won't be a full count of how bad it is."

Lynda Miller, grant director for Operation Care, also knows first-hand that local homeless numbers are tough to measure. The domestic violence shelter at which she works at times loans beds out to the homeless shelter when it's full. Miller volunteered to take an active role in conducting the new survey. She felt other counties where she's worked in the past have had better networks of support for the homeless than Amador County does.

"A lot of counties have entire coalitions of service agencies, community organizations and churches to work together on the homeless problem," she said. "That's something Amador has to build, too, if it's to have any hope of getting a handle on this."

Nina Machado, executive director of First 5 Amador, agreed. Machado has a special interest in working to strengthen the network of community organizations.

"We have great people and great programs in Amador, but everyone's busy and not always well-versed on what each other is doing," Machado said. "I think connecting the resources we have is the best way of taking advantage of real opportunities to help people and make a difference."

Machado cited a food security binder she recently put together as a simple example of how to do this: The binder pools contact information for all organizations and programs related to helping feed the hungry, including the Interfaith Food Bank, free and reduced school lunches, Women in Crisis and various senior care programs.

"People have found it very helpful," she said. "I think we can do more of that with other issues we're facing, like homelessness."

While county supervisors, the city of Jackson and other concerned parties wait for the official results of the survey, one piece of good news has turned up for the shelter. The Emergency Food and Shelter National Board Program granted the small sanctuary $33, 178 in desperately needed grant funding, which will help keep the shelter open for the remainder of the year. That grant was up from the $10,000 the shelter received last year from the board, which is chaired by the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

"Hold the cheers, though," Barbour warned about the grant. "The amount of money given is based on unemployment rates. ... When it goes up, it's because times are tough."

Barbour believed unemployment will continue to play a major role in the issue of homelessness in Amador County.

"In the interviews I did for the survey, when people were asked what the one thing they needed most was to get back on their feet, the most common answer was employment," Barbour recalled. "There was no sense of entitlement or that society owed them anything with most of these people - most of them were ready to work and just wanted a job."