This is horseshit and everyone involved knows it.

The methodologies for measuring this are a clusterfuck mess, housing is more expensive, decent paying jobs are below keeping up with working age population growth.

Source is me, I used to do analytics and basically half the computer backend shit for a large homeless-serving nonprofit.

The closest you can get to reasonable estimates are proxying unique indvidual/family 'demand' for some kind of help, vs how many you can serve.

The problem is that there are 10k tiny organizations that serve the homeless, and they all have entirely different standards for tracking that kind of shit, its not possible to merge all the data in an accurate and meaningful way.

Beyond that, tons of people are homeless, and don't seek help. Or, they seek help, and just waste a month or three, failing to fully qualify and then getting handed to some other org who doesnt have an opening or oops they missed a deadline for some paperwork or they couldnt return a call because their phone was dead, etc etc.

How do you count homeless people that live in their car?

That live on the streets and are constantly moving?

That live on the streets and are staying in one place, after the Grants Pass decision made that a crime?

That are squatting illegally in a derelict building?

The current Point In Time count, last time I worked the data for it... when I proxied it by our unserved 'demand' vs what qualified for the PIT, I came away with something like 'multiply our PIT # by at least 3, possibly 4 or even 5, for an actual realistic count'.

That was 2022.

I'd love to be able to prove this outright, but in 2023 a series of calamities happened to me and I then became homeless, so I kinda lost all my stuff.

But yeah, this is horseshit, the PIT counts are a joke.

Combine /everything/ with... SNAP and Section 8 being gutted/revamped? Tons of other Social Security and other gov agencies or departments that play a role in how all this shit actually gets processed, all their staff being gutted? That'd be a big factor change, from when I was doing the numbers.

My guess would be at least 3.5 million homeless people in the US, right now.

Is it that they were housed or that they are in detention centers?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Alliance_to_End_Homelessness

"This article may have been created or edited in return for undisclosed payments. It may require cleanup to comply with Wikipedia's content policies, particularly neutral point of view. See our advice if the article is about you and read our scam warning in case someone asks for money to edit this article. (May 2020)"

Press X to doubt.

Buuuuuullshit it did. I'm out here and it's getting crowded.

As a knee jerk reaction, I am gonna guess that the regime is just doing a much shittier job of tracking it, combined with a likely actual downswing in the numbers as a direct result of ICEatzgruppen indefinitely incarcerating and deporting unhoused people, regardless of nationality.

That's some propaganda bullshit if I've ever heard any

Bullshit. It's getting worse. Source: I live in Tacoma.

Ice is one hell of a drug.

I guess the Trump goons compromised NPR too

seems like it increased within the last 6 years but actually 10+years, coinciding with a large increase in posts on th subs people lost thier jobs/ cant find thier careers or people started railing on thier family member still living at home for one reason or another.