An effort is underway to recruit volunteers to help count homeless people in Montreal starting March 24.

The volunteers – who can sign up at icount-Mtl.ca – will walk the streets in teams in an effort to get a head count of the local homeless population.

The last time such an assessment was conducted in Montreal was in the 1990s, when it was concluded that about 30,000 homeless people lived in Montreal.

The project, funded to the tune of about $230,000 by the city of Montreal and run by the Douglas Hospital, aims to keep the city up with standards set by many other cities which have much better data concerning their homeless populations.

“We've been saying for so many years that we are hampered by an absence of good quality information,” said Old Brewery Mission Director Matthew Pearce.