A group of volunteers will spend the next week trying to get a true and accurate count of Southwest Georgia’s homeless population in hopes of using the numbers to justify additional state and federal attention to what some feel are the silent masses wandering the region’s streets.

The Southwest Georgia Regional Commission and its member counties are partnering with the Coalition to End Homelessness to host a weeklong survey of homeless or those deemed to be “precariously housed,” city of Albany Community and Economic Development Department official Thelma Watson said.

“There is this image of the homeless as strictly being those who don’t have a home or are out on the streets,” Watson said. “In reality, there are various categories of those who are precariously housed where they have no real control of where and when they’ll have a roof over there head ... like if they were forced to live with a relative or at a shelter.”

Read more: Albany Herald