Some of the volunteers said they were planning to join residents of the encampment in a protest the next morning. The count, they said, was an important way of ensuring officials confront the full scope of homelessness in their communities.

More broadly, volunteers told me it was the magnitude of the crisis they saw every day that moved them to spend four hours of their evenings looking for people sleeping in alleys or doorways and counting tents.

Ceraun Loggins, 29, told me they moved from Washington, D.C., in April. They bike to work, and seeing the number of people living on the streets, they said, “was a punch to the gut.”

Joining the count seemed like a simple way to help.

“It’s like one of these invisible mechanisms,” they said. “You don’t think about how it has to happen.”

After the short video, there was a mildly chaotic shuffle as the volunteers broke into groups of two to four. Each team was assigned a census tract. Some were walkable. Some, tucked higher into the hills, required a car.

The Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority gathers more specific demographic information about who is experiencing homelessness in a separate survey.

This time, though, we were told to count visually — not to engage.

I tagged along with a group of four, all in our 20s or 30s. We walked to our narrow rectangle tract, which was lined by quiet apartment buildings set back above the street.