Efforts are underway to count the number of homeless people living on Calgary streets.

The plan is to complete the tally in one night, with volunteers surveying more than70 facilities as well as trying to locate people sleeping outside.

A comprehensive count has not been done since 2008, when there were 4,000 people found to be homeless in the city.

That was the same year the Calgary Homeless Foundation launched its ten year plan to end homelessness.

“This is an important opportunity for us to answer a really critical question and that is — is the 10 year plan working?,” said the foundation’s CEO Tim Richter.

Since point-in-time counts were first begun in 1992, Calgary has typically seen 20 to 30 per cent increases every two years, he said.

Mustard Seed executive director Myron Krause is optimistic that the number will be lower.

“We've seen an average of 150 people every year moved out of our shelter into homes of their own. So we believe that has made a difference in individual lives, overall we will have to see if that has made a difference in the city,” Krause said.