Becky Kanis heads the “innovation team” at Common Ground, a nonprofit organization based at Manhattan that is devoted to ending homelessness. She was graduated from the United States Military Academy at West Point in 1991 and served in the Army for nine years. She will be one of hundreds of volunteers canvassing the streets, parks, and subways from midnight tonight to 4 a.m. tomorrow during the city’s first attempt to count the homeless population in all five boroughs. Her Common Ground team is responsible for a 250-block area in West Midtown. Ms. Kanis spoke the other day with of The New York Sun.

Q: Last year the city conducted a count of the homeless population in Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Staten Island, but this is the first time it is attempting to do a full count in all five boroughs. How significant a step is this?

A: Well, I think it’s a huge, big first step. We’ve been working on this since 2001, so it’s a couple of years in the making. It’s really important for a sense of accountability. You can’t solve a problem unless you have some idea of how big it is and you can’t measure your progress unless you keep going back and measuring in regular intervals. … It’s also what you do with the numbers that matter. We, for the past year, have been using our information to get people housed. Forty-four people who had been on the street for an average of eight years, they have their own apartments now. Two years ago people didn’t think this was possible.

Tell me a little bit about how the count works. How do volunteers make sure they’re not overlapping?

At 11 p.m. about 150 volunteers will convene right here. This is our whole catchment area from 23rd Street to 59th, and from Sixth Avenue west to the river. We’ve divided our neighborhood into about 20 sectors and we’ve made maps of each sector, literally with arrows that say “Turn left on this corner, turn right on that corner.”

The official homeless count from Wednesday night, the last night the city had on record, was 36,183. What number are you expecting to come up with in this count?

The 36,000, I think that’s the number that they have in shelter. This is a completely different measure, and that’s why this is so important. We know that there are a lot of people who won’t go into shelters. … The first year we did a count in our neighborhood, in 2001, there were 479; the second year, 425, and the next two years, 300, and that’s only in our 250 blocks. We are very optimistic that this year we’re going to see a reduction of people on the streets, and the reason we’re optimistic is because we’ve actually housed many of them.

So what do you do once you’ve taken down all of the information from the person you’ve approached? Are they given a cup of coffee or a piece of fruit, or are they brought into a shelter?

The last line on the survey is: “Would you like to go to shelter tonight?” If they say yes, the team stays with them and calls a mobile van that takes them to a shelter.

I know the city’s Department of Homeless Services is overseeing this operation, but what role do the nonprofits like Common Ground have in all of this?

In earlier years we obviously played a leadership role by starting it and showing that it could be done. But this year we’re on a team. It’s a team-player role. We’re continuing to take responsibility for our neighborhood. Other nonprofits are participating with their neighborhoods.

Critics say it’s a waste of taxpayer money and resources to be doing this count because you’ll never come up with an accurate number. What’s your response?

You need to have some measure of the magnitude. You need to know how many people are not entering the shelter system. I don’t think we should let the perfect get in the way of the good, or whatever that saying is. If it’s good enough and it’s done consistently year after year, you’re going to get a snapshot of how much work needs to be done. My personal belief is that anonymity, and not counting, causes people to continually fall through the cracks. This is bringing attention and assistance to people who are otherwise unaccounted for.

Last week a court-appointed panel issued a report saying the city should no longer have to report to a judge when making decisions about its homeless shelters. As you know, the case was tied to a lawsuit the city was involved in with the Legal Aid Society. What do you think?

Our president, Rosanne Haggerty, was one of the signatories to the letter saying it’s time to the drop the lawsuit. So, yes, we agree that it’s time to stop litigating and start solving these problems.

Tell me about how the Street-to-Home Initiative that Common Ground runs.

It’s based on London’s “rough sleepers” initiative, where the federal government said we are going to reduce street homelessness by two-thirds in three years. We adapted their methodology to one neighborhood in New York City that has the highest density of rough sleepers. People used to think that if someone was on the streets for a long time and they wanted to come inside, they would go to shelter. We’ve turned that paradigm on its head. Now the presumption is that someone would want housing and that they don’t want to go through shelter to get it.

The Tony Blair initiative sounds a lot like the Mike Bloomberg program. Bloomberg has said he wants to eliminate chronic homelessness and build 12,000 units of housing for people who now live in shelters. Are you satisfied with what he’s doing?

Absolutely. The Department of Homeless Services and the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene have convened working groups … to advise and assist and make the mayor’s plan a reality. I’m on one of those working groups, and we really are in the process of implementing all the different aspects of the plan.

So are you going to be out there for the count?

Absolutely. I’ve been on all of them since we started.