Jayne Moraski knocked on tent flap after tent flap at tent city on Wednesday, poking her head in to ask Gainesville homeless about their lives.
She asked, "Are you currently employed?" and "What caused you to become homeless?"
Moraski was a part of a larger project that tracked what services the homeless use in Gainesville and collected data from jails, schools and other organizations.
The Alachua County Coalition for the Homeless and Hungry and the Gainesville/Alachua County Office of Homelessness took the census from Tuesday to Wednesday morning.
Volunteers were paid $10 an hour to canvass Gainesville, visiting shelters, churches and other places where the homeless commonly spend time, including Tent City and other camps.
Many of the volunteers were homeless themselves, providing an advantage in picking out other homeless people in a crowded room or finding camps that are not well known.
"I'm pretty good at spotting homeless people," said Jimbo Hubertz, a volunteer who camps around Gainesville. "I've never been homeless, but they call me that."
It is impossible to get complete numbers because of the large variety of homelessness, said Jon DeCarmine, director of the coalition. Homeless people who are staying with relatives or are in other informal, temporary housing situations are notoriously hard to count, he said.
"We have no illusions that we counted everyone," he said.
A report on the findings could be available by Monday.
