Homes North manager responsible for the Together Home program, Jim Booth, said the annual search uncovered 25 people living on the streets.

The regional hotspot is Moree, with 11 people living on the street on the night of February 15.

The count spotted four homeless people living in Tamworth, one in Armidale, six in Gunnedah, one in Glen Innes, four in Narrabri and none in Inverell.

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Homelessness services will now return to the places they were spotted to help them into at least temporary accommodation.

"We've probably doubled the number of people that we've located this year. We're becoming better at it because we know where people tend to congregate and we've also got more services involved than, I think, ever before," Mr Booth said.

He said support services believed many people had left metropolitan Sydney and Newcastle to travel to rural areas.

They also believe homeless people are moving from large rural towns to small ones, forced out by a tight rental market, a theory they will test next year. Homeless people are also moving out of the CBDs of rural cities into more remote car parks.

An estimated 80 per cent of the homeless population in the region is Aboriginal.

TFSS homelessness caseworker Jordan Smith was one of the 45 volunteers that got up in the early morning on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday or Friday to do the check.

The street count is a simple non-intrusive head count, and street sleepers aren't waken for it.

"We've got several clients on board at the moment who went from rough sleeping over many years, some of them most of their lifetime," she said.

"They're now sustaining a tenancy, which is something that most of them would never have even thought that they would be able to do."

The vast majority of homeless people don't live on the street, with most of them couch surfing.

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