Volunteers are heading out on Oct. 25 and 26 to determine — for the first time — the number of people who are sleeping on Winnipeg's streets.

The street census will focus on a 24-hour period, when more than 300 volunteers will hit emergency shelters, transitional housing locations, churches, drop-in centres, breakfast programs and the street itself. There, they will survey people they meet, asking questions about their living situations to determine whether they're homeless.

For Winnipeg's Social Planning Council, it's the first step to addressing the issue in a practical way.

"Siloam Mission tells me the beds are full; Resource Assistance for Youth tells me that youth keep having higher and higher needs; the women's centres tell me there [are] women that are in more and more precarious situations," said Christina Maes Nino, community animator with the council.

"But we don't have a place where all of that information is put together in a way that we can go … to government, go to policymakers … and go to the public and say, 'This is a crisis.'"

The census is expected to fill that gap, but it will come with its share of challenges: For someone who lives on the street, being invisible is critical to survival, Maes Nino said.

Al Wiebe knows that, having lived without a home for 18 months in Winnipeg, after he lost a well-paying job that he called "his life" while battling undiagnosed clinical depression.

Wiebe fled the city, looking for distraction.

"I spent enormous amounts of money to keep the depression away," he told CBC.

But it didn't work. He came back to Winnipeg on Christmas Day, with no friends or family waiting for him, and from there, things "spiralled out of control."

He credits a friendly nurse at St. Boniface Hospital for helping him pull his life together, and he said he is eager to help with the homeless census so the city can start targeting resources by getting a handle on the size and scope of the problem.

"When we go for funding, [we will] actually have a finite number to say this is what we need for this service," he said.