Signal 2: A Novel Way to Estimate Homeless Population Size
Due to the transient nature of homelessness, it is hard to exactly answer basic questions about homeless people such as how many are there, where are they, and how do we reach them. Outreach services also have to contend with many homeless people not actively seeking out shelters, due to their believing them to be dangerous, and other services. But public officials in New York City are trying out-of-the-box ideas to get a true sense of the scale of the problem. A study pays 200 former homeless people to act as decoys and frequent places where homeless people congregate. Then, volunteers engage in an over-night ‘game’ of hide-and-go-seek to find those 200 people. The percentage of decoys not found gives a rough estimate of how many homeless people are not counted in a typical street survey and a better estimate for the overall homeless population. Small steps towards quantifying a seemingly unquantifiable issue could help propel interest in analytical studies of homelessness and therefore improve tools used by the Department of Homeless Services.
