Homeless people in an eastern South Carolina municipality might soon have city-issued identification cards, according to a published report.

The motive of Myrtle Beach officials is to provide assistance to the city residents who are in need of help during the challenging times, according to South Carolina Now.

Additional benefits include enhancing public safety and helping to save tax dollars.

"We don't want [to] do for homeless people what they can do for themselves," organizer Mary Jeffcoat with the Myrtle Beach Homeless Coalition told the news source.

Leaders in the Atlantic coast city probed methods of making city services more efficient for the people who needed them, which in turn would help make the homeless people become more self-sufficient.

"Right now we have several agencies that are working to house homeless people," Jeffcoat told the news source. "We are trying to figure out how they can combine and become one agency."

Myrtle Beach also wants to distribute identification cards to residents who are homeless and who benefit from the services that the city has to offer, in addition to merging agencies.

The identification cards will be part of a centralized database that allows the organizations to determine which people are using which services, she said.

She said staving off duplicated services and enhancing public safety measures in the city would be two byproducts of the identification cards.

"We have some people who are living on the streets and are convicted felons," Jeffcoat told the news source. "So we need to know who is here."

The homeless population in Myrtle Beach and Horry County is believed to be growing, according to Myrtle Beach Online.

Estimates this past May amounted to roughly 1,200 homeless people in the county and more than 40 service providers help them.

Those providers include churches, community groups, social services agencies and local governments, the publication reports.