
71% of homeless people in SF once had homes in the city - anigbrowl
http://sfist.com/2016/02/11/71_of_sf_homeless_once_had_homes_in.php
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Mz
There are all kinds of problems with trying to do any kind of survey. When
doing a survey of people who are homeless, those issues are no doubt
compounded. Here is a link from within this article concerning how we count
"the homeless":
[http://sfist.com/2015/01/20/at_last_count_there_were.php](http://sfist.com/2015/01/20/at_last_count_there_were.php)

And the short version is they literally hire people to count all the homeless
people they SEE. Presumably without doing any follow up to validate.

I have been homeless for over 4 years. Many people do not assume that I am
when they first meet me. They have to see me repeatedly before they figure it
out. I don't look obviously filthy, unkempt, etc. So I and others like me
would likely be missed by a count of this sort.

------
JoeAltmaier
Self-reported as having once had a home. SO, grain of salt.

~~~
nwah1
Why would they lie?

~~~
kafkaesq
Many people believe the homeless are, by and large possessed of intrinsically
low intelligence and/or ethical character, and generally have only themselves
to blame for their situation.

So (this reasoning goes) when approached by a pollster, why _wouldn 't_ they
lie?

~~~
astrodust
This is pretty low even by Hacker News standards.

There are some highly intelligent people who are homeless, they have no
ethical problems. They may have dependency issues, they might have a mental
illness. In the US it's even possible they got wiped out by medical bills and
can't afford anything, their credit is destroyed and they're not physically
able to work, yet that's just the _visible_ homeless, not all of the actually
homeless people.

I've been technically homeless for six months. Even though I had money, I had
a job, and I spent every day looking for listings, finding a place was crazy
hard, every listing would be snapped up within hours of being posted. I ended
up couch surfing and living out of my office.

It didn't matter that I had a job, that I even owned the company, I was still
homeless. It sucked. The place I was renting was sold, I had to move, and the
timing was awful.

Long-term homeless people have a host of issues that keep them in that trap,
but that's a small portion of homeless people in general.

~~~
kafkaesq
_This is pretty low even by Hacker News standards._

Woah, big misunderstanding here: I was pointing out that _other_ people
believed that -- not that that's what _I_ believe.

