Homelessness Up or Down: Make Up Your Mind, Bureaucrats!

by Shannon Moriarty · 2008-10-23 06:02:00 UTC
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SLO Homeless blogger Michael wrote an excellent post yesterday in response to this week's USA Today article reporting the increase in family homelessness in the 12 largest cities in America. This doesn't seem to be at odds with the perilous headlines that we've seen lately, so it wasn't much of a shocker to me.

Oddly enough, in July, USA Today was reporting that there has been a 15% decrease in homelessness! Here's a little history lesson, courtesy of SLO Homeless:

This past July, HUD patted itself on the back and issued a press release making claims that the numbers of homeless were down 15 percent. The total reduction in homeless persons, according to the press release, was 32,000 from 2005 through 2007. Even the news media were patting HUD on the back with their headlines such as this one from USA Today on July 29, 2008: Drop in homeless count seen as "success story"

Seems crazy, right? Amidst a foreclosure crisis and the start of the downward spiraling of our economy, HUD was claiming that homelessness had actually become less of a problem. Michael attributes this absurdity to the "bureaucratic mindset":

HUD altered their method of counting homeless persons by redefining who can be classified a homeless. By doing so, they were able to exclude counting an entire host of persons from their "official" tally. As a result, it gave the appearance that there were fewer homeless persons. By using this lowered number, they were able to give the impression that the percentage of homeless who had been taken off the streets was higher than it would have been had they not changed their enumeration methods. Quite literally, HUD deliberately skewed the numbers to make it seem that headway was being made.

Oh, it gets much worse. Take a look at Michael's post. Seems he's caught the bureaucratic "experts" flip-flopping on their assessment of homelessness in America.

[Picture: Philip Mangano, Executive Director of the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness, needs to make up his mind: is homelessness increasing or decreasing?]

Shannon Moriarty has worked in various homeless shelters and service organizations around the country. She is a graduate student studying housing and urban policy at Tufts University.
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