When Jerome Harris became homeless, he didn’t expect it to come.

The 61-year-old lived in a two-bedroom apartment and had a steady job cleaning machines at JBS Beef Plant in Tolleson.

But then life started moving too fast — too fast. The COVID-19 pandemic has hit. My rent has gone up. His parents died within a week of each other. He slipped into a puddle on the job and injured himself on the job.

“I’ve never had so many things go wrong at the same time,” Harris said.

Unable to work, he simply couldn’t keep up. Soon he was out in the street.

“Never think this can’t happen to you,” said Harris, who became homeless last year.

Harris was one of many unprotected people surveyed Tuesday as part of Maricopa County’s Point-in-Time Count, the annual census of people experiencing homelessness.

The data collected by volunteers on January 1st of each year is part of a long-standing nationwide initiative to understand the extent of homelessness in the United States.

During the count, volunteers spread throughout the county, finding unprotected people everywhere, from bus shelters and storefronts to alleys and established homeless camps.

Their painstakingly collected data isn’t perfect, but it provides an important snapshot of the homeless population and helps constitute the leading data source on homelessness across the country.