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The Partnership for the Homeless believes it is crucial to develop an accurate portrait of homeless New Yorkers who are living in public spaces, in order to formulate effective policies that help them leave the city’s streets, subways, and parks for permanent housing and lives of independence.

Unfortunately, a simple, one-time census will not reveal the complex issues behind homelessness. Moreover, the methodology of the count that the city is conducting on Feb. 23 and the nature of the homeless street population combine to make an accurate count and portrait of street homelessness unlikely. As we discovered in last year’s count, many homeless individuals were overlooked—yet the same process is being used for the upcoming count.

Most troubling, an inaccurate count may result in poor policy decisions and decreased resources needed to make a real difference in moving people off the street.

The Problems:

1. The count focuses only on the narrow issue of how many people dwell in public spaces, but does not address the far more important question of why people became homeless or why they choose the streets over other alternatives. Numbers alone give us no insight into the complexity of the problems confronting people living on our streets. Homeless people are not a homogeneous group; they are individuals who are as diverse as the city itself. Planning and shaping policy cannot be driven by arithmetic, but by an understanding of individuals and their unique needs.

2. The City’s count is a one-night-only event. Any single count may be influenced by temperature, events going on in certain neighborhoods or near areas where homeless individuals usually congregate, police activity or many other factors. While no count is likely to identify every individual, taking counts on different days throughout the year and using the average is a more reliable way to try to get a picture of the current population living on the street.

3. Any street count is likely to miss a large number of people, especially if it relies on volunteers. People living in cars, in dangerous or hard-to-access areas, such as parks, subway cars, tunnels, and abandoned buildings are often overlooked even in counts conducted by trained professionals. The New York City count actively avoids the places where homeless individuals are most likely to sleep to protect the safety of volunteers. This guarantees a low count.

4. Other major cities have conducted similar counts, and experts have concluded that the counts are inaccurate. Researchers who have designed and conducted counts in Chicago, Monterey, Boston, Santa Cruz, and Los Angeles have concluded that a significant undercount is inevitable when attempting to count homeless people living on the street. (Some studies are listed below.)

5. With the count likely to be low, necessary resources and crucial services may be cut—undermining the primary goal of the count. While numbers may persuade some funders and policy makers that street homelessness is a problem that deserves increased resources and attention, these counts, which by definition will underestimate the problem, could be used to cut funding during a time of budget crises. This could inadvertently undermine the very goal of the count.

Our Recommendation:

There are numerous homeless outreach teams in place that could be mobilized to provide a far more accurate count, over time, as well as an assessment of individual needs. The single-night count uses many volunteers to conduct the count. However, professional outreach teams work daily throughout the city, finding and building relationships with homeless people living in public spaces. These teams know where homeless people dwell and are equipped to gather more in-depth information such as how long someone has been living on the street. A shared database (with safeguards for privacy) would enable these teams to assemble a more reliable portrait of people living on the street than the one night count can.

Drever, A. Homeless Methodologies: An Annotated Bibliography, Institute for the Study of Homelessness and Poverty, 1999.

Edin, K. “Counting Chicago’s Homeless: An assessment of the Census Bureau’s “Street and Shelter Night”, Evaluation Review, Volume 16, pp 365-375.

Shelter Partnership, The Number of Homeless People in Los Angeles City and County July 1992 to June 1993, Los Angeles: shelter Partnership Inc, 1994.