‘Heavy and hopeful’: Boston volunteers canvas city for homeless census

Just after midnight on Thursday, while hundreds of thousands of Bostonians slept in warm homes with solid roofs, a collection of city employees, social workers and other caring souls searched for those who were not. In the doorway of a Downtown Crossing building outside Macy’s, they found one man huddled on the cold concrete. He was tucked under a scratchy gray blanket — the kind people use to cover wooden furniture when they move houses — to escape the gusts of bitter, 23-degree air, doing his best to sleep. Jim...