US homelessness up 12% to highest reported level as rents soar and coronavirus pandemic aid lapses

I used to work as a data analyst at a nonprofit that ran homeless shelters... and then became homeless myself after a lot of crime happened to me.

That 600k ish number is what is called a point in time count. It only happens once per year (didnt happen at all during covid) and mainly consists of adding the number of people in shelters to the number of people that can be counted by poorly paid people going to the largest known encampments and doing a head count.

Statistically, methodologically, this is atrocious.

A huge number of homeless on the streets wander around. A huge number of homeless live in vehicles. A huge number of homeless more or less jump every few months between friends and relatives places couch surfing. An unknown number of homeless live in their own little private hideouts in all the little nooks and crannies of a city, attempting to stay away from the larger encampments that often turn into drug dens, sex trafficking trap houses and lots of assault and murder, fought over by warring violent gangs, used as stops for transferring illegal weaponry, and sometimes blackmarket organ chopshops!. And of course a significant number of homeless bounce between homeless and jail or mental facilities. Many homeless also live as long as they can afford to in motels, then go on the street, the back to the motel when a paycheck or gov payment comes in. Now, also, people move between all of these categories, as well as shelters.

Aha, oh right. You live in a tiny house smaller than a studio apartment, with no water, maybe electricity?, on a parking lot with with 59 other people doing the same, communal bathrooms and cooking area outside, no laundry facilities? Wonderful! According to basically all Non Profits and the Government, /you are not homeless/.

It also matters... or mattered... when during the year you do the PIT count. People move less in the Winter and are easier to count than in the Summer. There is little historic consistency to the time of the year the PIT count is and has been done in, because its a crap shoot amalgamation of numbers from tens of thousands of non profits and local governments all over the country, that all have different funding situations and prioritize reporting different statistics differently... so at best you can /maybe kind of bullshit guess/ a seasonality modifier, but when I tried, I couldnt pull it off in a way that was statistically valid... error margins just too large with too many variables, and an obscene number of data quality issues.

Or, at least there was a seasonal trend until Covid. Covid broke the economy and society in general so badly that it demolished this seasonal trend, instead just becoming an exponential trend upward, every quarter. The seasonality factor became statistically irrelevant, it was just now constant per quarter growth, instead of yearly growth going upward within seasonal highs and lows.

I would basically educated guess at this point that that 600k number should be multiplied by about 5, and that a general nation wide uptick of 12% seems about right.

Oh. If you add in people who are at risk of being evicted within 3 months, or know theyre going to become homeless in 3 months when the money runs out or whatever, who know their broken RV is gonna get towed and trashed by city municipal after the cops remove them from it and /refer them to a shelter that is already full, and wouldnt allow them in with all their belongings or their dog anyway?/

Take that number we multiplied by 5 already, and then multiply it by roughly 3.

Yeah, shit is insanely fucked.

If you want a talking point against idiots who support police clearing encampments who justify thia by saying "Well the cops told them all about shelters they could go to!" ... the shelters everywhere in every major city right now are nearly always full, nearly all the time.

And if they bring up Section 8, let them know Section 8 has a roughly 8 year waiting period, and you can only apply for section 8 when the application period is open, and there is no schedule for when applications will be opened, and there is no notification system to let you know when it has been opened, and the application period which used to be about one random week a year... just has not opened at all since covid.

If you know a Q Tard who thinks that half a million children get abducted every year? Tell them 1) thats fucking nonsense 2) that many homeless /actually/ die every year 3) wait for them to justify that thats fine because all homeless are morally inferior and deserve death 4) tell them there are quite a lot of homeless children in that yearly homeless death number you juat gave them 5) prepare to stand your ground with the second ammendment as the Q Tard will now definitely be enraged and may attempt to attack you 6) spit on their grave.