According to the HUD (Housing & Urban Dev.) the number is 653,000, but this seems pretty low from anecdotal experience {1}

But on the other hand there is a rate of 4.2 MILLION children experiencing homelessness every year {2}, a nearly 7times larger number than the entire homelessness population. This is a factual discrepancy that was pretty alarming.

So I took a dive into how homelessness is counted in America, and apparently the counting method, which determines the total amount of funding for the HUD every year, is determined in probably the worst way I’ve ever seen, and likely deliberately so

The HUD counts the homeless people of America through one statistic: the Point in Time count {3} In essence, the only way homeless people are counting such that the HUD receives funding is by, on the last 10 days of January, picking one night and walking around and counting the homeless people you see

You’re not allowed to supply any other kind of data to count the homeless, whether it be people served, people interviewed, or homelessness claimed on any other day of the year

Just who you can manage to physically count on one night.

It seems very deliberately negligent. And it probably is, especially as we continue to pass legislature that places these people into the prison system.

source 1

source 2

source 3

If we’re counting 700,000 people using this s***ty system and we KNOW 4 million kids are homeless, how many are actually homeless ? 10 million, 15 million adults? is one in every 20 Americans homeless?

yeah bro the PIT count is a f***ing joke and its like that every year

There's probably 700,000 in San Fran alone

I would say a realistic count is 10-12,500

The Bay Area might be home to 100-120,000

LA county might have the same

What abt the greater LA area I’d maybe triple that number especially with SB and RS county in that

And a s***ton of empty buildings that aint being used for nothing lol

just me and my buddy eric

the child stat seems to be talking abt the total number of kids who experienced homelessness over the course of a year. So like if they were homeless for a month but then got put in foster care or something, i think that still counts. the annual number might be 4 million but I don't think that means there's 4 million homeless kids right now.

PIT seems inaccurate asf but i find it hard to believe that it's off by like 500%. I think a better explanation for the difference is that the two stats ur comparing aren't actually talking abt the same thing

Let’s be real here, if your method for counting homelessness is doing a traipsing physical headcount on one day of the year, you cannot perceivably account for 20% of the homeless population

HUD physically cannot do that, they do not have the personnel or the funding to achieve even a 20% count rate, that’s just how population statistics work

And also, 4 million kids experiencing homelessness across 1 year isn’t the same thing as experiencing homelessness now ? Be f***ing forreal

How could that possibly detract from my statement

i mean it literally isn't lol. like the HUD stat is about how many ppl would be homeless on a given day while the child stat is abt how many kids go through homelessness over the course of a year.

why does me pointing that out deserve an emotional response? im not minimizing anything here, just pointing out that these two stats represent different things.

ur saying "these numbers should be similar, but one is WAY bigger than the other" and going from there. in reality, those two stats are not measuring the same thing, and we should expect the annual stat to be way more than the daily stat.

The HUD stat is not representing “how many people go through homelessness in a day”

It’s used to represent all homeless in America for a calendar year

It can’t even represent how many people go through homelessness in a day, it’s literally measuring “how many homeless people can we come across in one day” then incorrectly framing that as representative of the above statistic

Something with this user and always hitting the “ummmm actually” followed by the most asinine statements ever

dude ur literally so stupid.

ur telling me the stat HUD uses (PIT) is meant to represent the total number of ppl who go thru homelessness over the course of a year? PIT literally stands for POINT-in-time. like how are u so stupid lol obviously point in time refers to a single point in time, not a whole fkn year.

look bruv ur point abt HUD seeming to undercount homeless ppl is worth discussing but the statistical side of ur argument is very misleading.

The PIT method is used to determine the total number of homeless people every year. So yes it literally represents that; it also is the number that determines their funding

Source 1

bcsh.ca.gov/calich/documents/pit_count.pdf

ur such a f***ing weirdo man my first post wasn't even on some hater sht, I was just theorizing on the stats. why tf u gotta respond so defensively n then insult me for no reason.

ur a b**** for that

Yeah you f***ing suck

midwit.

it says annual report bc it comes out once a year not bc it's reporting on the total number of homeless ppl over the course of a year. it says the stat is for a single day in the first paragraph of ur source

where i live there are actual tent cities everywhere, i always felt like the numbers were way too low

lived in a loft on skid row for over a year, can def assure you that the #’s are waaaay off — the population grew tremendously during covid. with that being said it would not be an easy task to get an accurate census of the area.

there's more than that in Portland alone

daaaaaaamn