Invisible people: region likely undercounting homeless population significantly
From the 1933 movie The Invisible Man, in which the unseen protagonist has to wear body bandages for people to know he's there.
While SJ and SF brag about small percentage improvements in homeless population, the truth—according to experts—is that the data is dubious, at best. And that agencies are leaving a huge proportion of the truly unhoused uncounted. From X, Public Integrity, and StreetSense media.
Micherller Steeb on X: HUD not counting up to 60% of homeless
The U.S. homeless crisis is much grimmer than @HUD and @USICH report. Roughly 60% of the nation's homeless families are NOT included in the annual count as @HUD modified the federal government’s definition of homelessness ~2011.
The “non-counted” families are ineligible for HUD-funded resources, the largest source of public funding for the homeless.
The implications are severe in the short term but even more so in the long term, as this author explains from his lived experience.
Hope you will tackle this travesty, too @VivekGRamaswamy @DOGE @RepAndyBarr
#HomelessNOTHelpless
#FreeUpFoundation
https://columbiamissourian.com/opinion/letter
Read the whole thing here.
Public Integrity reports: Up to 300,000 students clearly missing from homeless tabulations
A Center for Public Integrity analysis of district-level federal education data suggests roughly 300,000 students entitled to essential rights reserved for homeless students have slipped through the cracks, unidentified by the school districts mandated to help them.
Some 2,400 districts — from regions synonymous with economic hardship to big cities and prosperous suburbs — did not report having even one homeless student despite levels of financial need that make those figures improbable.
And many more districts are likely undercounting the number of homeless students they do identify. In nearly half of states, tallies of student homelessness bear no relationship with poverty, a sign of just how inconsistent the identification of kids with unstable housing can be.
The reasons include a federal law so little-known that people charged with implementing it often fail to follow the rules; nearly non-existent enforcement of the law by federal and state governments; and funding so meager that districts have little incentive to survey whether students have stable housing.
“It’s a largely invisible population,” said Barbara Duffield, executive director of SchoolHouse Connection, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit focused on homeless education. “The national conversation on homelessness is focused on single adults who are very visible in large urban areas. It is not focused on children, youth and families. It is not focused on education.”
Read the whole thing here.
StreetSense media reports: Homeless counts miss people doubling up, sleeping in garages and on couches
Many people experiencing homelessness, having had negative encounters with government workers in the past, are cautious around them and don’t trust the Census. According to Handerhan, many in the homeless population are afraid that the information they give will be publicly shared. He stressed that any information provided for the census is confidential.
According to a 2019 report by the Census Bureau, 25.2 million households were “doubled-up” in 2019: temporarily sheltering with friends or family. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development does not include people who are doubled up in its definition of homelessness, and thus they are not counted.
Read the whole thing here.
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