Are there 570,000 Homeless or 1.2 Million? Depends Who You Ask

On a recent evening, Denis McDonough, President Obama’s chief of staff, walked in the dark calling out, “Male, over 25; female, 18 to 24.”
Homeless people rarely have the privilege of having an audience with the president’s right-hand man — much less, one on their own turf. But that’s exactly what happened on a recent evening when McDonough and a crew consisting of Secret Service agents, White House staffers and San Francisco’s Mayor Ed Lee took part in the point-in-time count of homeless people living across America. (Within 90 minutes, the team counted 144 people in eight square blocks around San Francisco’s city hall.) The participation of a high-ranking Cabinet official drew attention to this little-known tool that provides essential direction for governments and service providers. It also brings focus to a population that’s often hidden out of sight, forgotten on vacant doorsteps, under freeway overpasses and in emergency shelters.
“What I see here, what we just walked through, this is a problem. But this is the same sort of challenge we face all over the country,” McDonough says. “The numbers tell the story. And that’s why this count is so important.”
WHAT ARE POINT-IN-TIME SURVEYS?
Here’s the formula: Sometime during the last 10 days of January (with a few exceptions), thousands of volunteers fan out across towns and cities across the U.S. to take a census of unsheltered street people. Equipped with clipboards and flashlights, they’re often assigned a small geographic area to avoid duplicates. The counts began in 1983 in 60 municipalities, as an increasingly visible population became homeless due to poverty, drug use and the closure of state-run mental institutions. Standardized methods for the counts were firmed up in 2005 and have since been refined. Along with figures from homeless shelters and transitional housing, numbers from the point-in-time count are submitted to the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). From there, the data gives a local and national snapshot of the homeless population that guides service providers, Congress, HUD and other agencies.
HOW OFTEN ARE THEY CONDUCTED?
HUD requires shelters to submit their data every year, but point-in-time surveys only happen biennially, usually in the odd-numbered years. Many large cities, however, choose to complete the census annually to keep abreast of the latest trends. “When we get an accurate count, the numbers tell us what to do,” Mayor Lee tells the San Francisco Chronicle. “Data drives action. That’s what this night is all about.”
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IS THERE MORE TO THE SURVEYS THAN JUST COUNTING PEOPLE ON THE STREETS?
Since the federal government introduced its long-term plan to end chronic and veteran homelessness by 2015, as well as youth and family homelessness by 2020, HUD has requested detailed data on those subpopulations. Some surveys require nothing more than approximate age and gender, but others, like Los Angeles’s survey, consists of a seven-page questionnaire asking things like, “Where have you been spending most of your nights?” “Do you have ongoing health problems or medical conditions?” and “How many times have you been housed and homeless?”
In Connecticut, for the first time, volunteers will ask the homeless about their specific housing, medical and employment needs to add to a registry. “In the past, each program kept its own waitlist for housing and other important services…Under that old system, providers and public officials had no way to gain a global view of the total needs to end homelessness in their community,” Lisa Tepper Bates, executive director of the Connecticut Coalition to End Homelessness, writes in an op-ed. A “community-wide by-name registry,” she adds, allows nonprofits “to target the right kind of assistance to the right person.”
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HOW DO VOLUNTEERS FIND THE HOMELESS?
It’s not easy. Organizers target known homeless encampments, but there’s always the chance of missing some. Because of its huge area, Los Angeles has been one of the leaders in improving its methodology. To supplement a count that takes place over multiple nights — from the posh neighborhoods along the ocean (some of which had their first count this year) to deep into the San Gabriel Valley — the city also conducts a random telephone survey of the “hidden homeless,” which added an additional 18,000 to the 36,000 people already counted on the street or in shelters.
Even if volunteers are able to locate people they suspect to be homeless, answers are not always forthcoming. (“None of your goddamn business” is how someone rebuffed two women who work for the Department of Veteran Affairs in D.C. when they asked him.) Many cities equip volunteers with gift bags and resource lists, small incentives that may prod someone to answer a few questions.
WHAT DO OFFICIALS EXPECT FROM THIS YEAR’S RESULTS?
A year ago, HUD reported that 578,434 people were homeless on a given night, a 2 percent decline from 2013. Exact figures from last month’s count won’t be known until municipalities release them later this year, but so far, experts aren’t optimistic about another decrease. (Already-released figures in Seattle show an alarming 21 percent jump from last year.) Why? Gentrification is driving up rent and decreasing the number of vacant apartments up and down the West Coast, says Katy Miller, regional coordinator for the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness. Add to that lingering poverty and unemployment from the recession, a dearth of affordable housing and limited mental health care infrastructure, and it’s suddenly clear why so many are losing their homes.
But it’s not all bad news. Expect some bright spots in the declining numbers of homeless veterans, which has already dropped one-third from 2010 to 2014, thanks in part to First Lady Michelle Obama. Mayors across the country responded to her call to end veteran homelessness this year — a goal that’s well within reach, as New Orleans has demonstrated. The chronically homeless population should also decrease as well, continuing the 21 percent decline from 2010 to 2014. As Salt Lake City has shown, putting the homeless into housing can bring these numbers close to zero. Look for the common-sense solution of “Housing First” to once again prove its effectiveness when totals debut.
HOW ACCURATE ARE THE FINDINGS?
Many in the field believe the counts far underestimate the actual number of people experiencing homelessness. For one, the count occurs during the bitter freeze of late January, when many homeless aren’t living on the street. The calendar assumption seems to be that the homeless will be more likely to enter the shelter when it’s cold outside and thus be counted, but they could also take refuge in a vehicle or seek protection in a church basement. The head counts are “hit or miss,” says Paul Boden, director of the Western Regional Advocacy Project, a homeless rights group. “Those whom they could see, they counted,” he writes in an op-ed in the San Francisco Chronicle. “Point-in-time counts are a minimum number, always. They undercount hidden homeless populations because homeless persons are doubling up with the housed or cannot be identified by sight as homeless.” A quick look at other studies support Boden’s claim, including data released by the U.S. Department of Education, which reports that the number of homeless students has nearly doubled since the 2006-07 school year, to 1.2 million.
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WHICH GROUPS ARE OFTEN MOST EXCLUDED FROM THE CENSUS?
Point-in-time surveys do provide a snapshot taken at roughly the same time, a HUD official notes, which can “benchmark progress” with some confidence every two years — assuming that the face of homelessness is not changing. Some advocates fear that the largest new population of homeless — families who’ve lost their homes in the recession and are bouncing between couches, cheap motels and other temporary residences— are not being identified since they don’t “look homeless” to survey volunteers.
In addition to families, youth are most often among the undercounted, Boden says. Unaccompanied homeless youth are referred to as an “invisible population” because they’re particularly difficult to count. Studies attempting to estimate the total range from 22,700 to 1.7 million, a huge disparity. To improve count accuracy, HUD has partnered with a number of other agencies for a program called “Youth Count!” Since 2013, these groups have tried to attract youth homeless into shelters for the one-night counts with free meals and activities. They also approach homeless youth earlier in the day, when they’re likely easier to find at hotspots for young people like malls or recreation centers, LGBT-focused agencies and schools.
Unfortunately, while this system counts those down-and-out on the streets, it does little to track those who are grappling with housing insecurity — the very people which may be counted among this country’s homeless during the next point-in-time survey.
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7 Reasons Why Community Colleges Are Necessary for America’s Prosperity

In last week’s State of the Union, President Barack Obama laid out a plan to offer a community college education free of charge to every American. These schools, as Obama said back in 2010, are “treated like the stepchild of the higher education system. They’re an afterthought, if they’re thought of at all,” but now he’s hoisted them up as the “centerpiece of [his] education agenda.”
Some question whether his proposal for free tuition is the best use of limited cash, but setting politics aside, there’s no denying that the nation’s 1,130 community colleges play a vital role in higher education. Here’s why they’re essential to our success.
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3 Reasons Why Sunday’s Historic Climate March Could Be the Start of Something Huge

Thousands of protestors will cram the streets of New York City this Sunday, calling on world leaders to help stop climate change. But they’ll also have another message: “Welcome to a new chapter in the fight against global warming. This time it’s going to work.”
The People’s Climate March is expected to be the biggest-ever collective action against global climate change, and organizers are hoping the protest will mark a watershed moment in their fight.
For years, scientist and activists have been pleading for coordinated action to halt the warming of the planet, but world leaders have repeatedly failed to rise to the challenge. Since the disastrous United Nations Climate Conference in Copenhagen in 2009, global summits have not forged worldwide consensus on how to achieve the U.N.’s stated goal of restricting any future global temperature increase to no more than two degrees Celsius.
This weekend’s march is set to coincide with another one of these global meetings: The U.N. Climate Summit 2014. No decisions will be made at the event, which will be attended by 125 world leaders, including President Obama. But the summit will lay the groundwork for landmark U.N. climate conferences this December in Lima and next year in Paris.
Despite the failures of the past, organizers of the People’s Climate March see at least three reasons to hope this year.
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Are You One Skill Away From Your Dream Job? Meet the Man Who Will Help You Find Out

When it comes to serving his community, Jason Green has a lot to live up to. He’s the son of a preacher, and the great great grandson of Garey Green, a carpenter who helped build his Maryland town’s first school for African American children in 1874 — offering opportunity when there was none. Walking through the creaky two-room school house, which still stands today, Jason can’t help but feel inspired. “Knowing that with minimal resources, this community was able to educate an entire generation is a motivator for me.” Last year Jason left his job as an associate council to President Obama, moved back home and started a small company called SkillSmart — a 21st century education tool. 
SkillSmart, which launches this summer, is an online platform that connects job seekers with employers based on their skills. “I want to help people see where one skill can be transferable to another career, and figure out how to get there,” he says. The site will also identify what skills are in demand, and helps individuals find the training resources to become more marketable in the workforce. Watch to learn more about the program and the family history that inspired Jason to start it.
 
 
 

This 6-Year High School Challenges Everything We Thought We Knew About American Education

At the innovative P-TECH early college high school in Brooklyn, “innovators” (what they call their students) don’t finish school until grade 14. But here’s the kicker: When they graduate, they walk away with an associates degree and a guaranteed job at IBM.
Thanks to public and private partnerships (IBM provides mentors for the school), P-TECH kids are taught science, technology engineering and math skills that get them ready for collegiate success and an invaluable leg up in the global economy. It’s a radical makeover of our traditional education system. As Rana Foorohar writes for her TIME cover story on the school, “a four-year high school degree these days only guarantees a $15 an hour future.”
MORE: This City Has a Bold Plan to Close the Technology Gap
P-TECH only launched in Sept. 2011 but already has scores of high-profile endorsements and even imitators. Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, inspired by the New York academy, is opening six P-TECH schools in his own city. He told the magazine, “What’s very clear to me is that high school education as it is envisioned today isn’t sufficient for the modern workplace, or the modern economy.”
President Obama visited the Crown Heights-based school last year, and touted its game-changing model in his State of the Union address: “This country should be doing everything in our power to give more kids the chance to go to schools just like this one.”
MORE: Inside the Movement for Free Community College
“Companies, they’re looking for the best-educated people, wherever they live. And they’ll reward them with good jobs and good pay. And if you don’t have a well-educated workforce, you’re gonna be left behind,” Obama said.
The President also said in a speech during his October visit to the school that Verizon and Microsoft are following in the footsteps of P-TECH’s partner, IBM, and are considering public school collaborations. “This is a ticket into the middle class, and it’s available to everyone who is willing to work for it,” he said. “That’s what public education is supposed to do.”