Hundreds of volunteers visited shelters Sunday night in an attempt to better understand how many people are homeless in Winnipeg.

Three-hundred people are popping into emergency shelters and transitional housing locations across Winnipeg Sunday night and Monday. The goal is to put a number to how many people are calling the streets and shelters home.

On Monday, the volunteers will go to breakfast programs, drop-in centres and churches. In the evening, they'll fan out across the inner-city to count people on the streets.

In 2013, The Homeless Hub, a research organization focused on Canada's homeless populations, estimated that about 30,000 people are living on the streets nationwide on any given night.

Until now, there has never been a formal survey to closely determine how many people are homeless in the city.

The survey got underway at 7 p.m. Sunday night.