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Consider the inherent differences in the metrics you're using. The comment that started this discussion involved observing people visiting a soup kitchen. Shor
by scythe 6y ago
Consider the inherent differences in the metrics you're using.
The comment that started this discussion involved observing people visiting a soup kitchen. Short-term homeless may outnumber long-term homeless in an absolute metric (I was homeless for a few months in 2014) but long-term homeless make many more lifetime visits to a soup kitchen and therefore comprise a higher proportion of the people you meet. They also comprise a higher proportion of the people who are at any given time living on the street. If you solve short-term homelessness but not long-term homelessness, you haven't made nearly as much of a dent in the shelter beds and tent cities as you have in the quoted statistic of people who are ever homeless.
I'm sure you do meet "high-functioning adults" in soup kitchens, but I would also doubt they're the modal attendees.
- dan-robertson 6y agoYour implication of certain people making more lifetime visits implying that a majority of the visitors are from that group does not follow. For example if a typical longtime homeless person would make (round number) 400 visits a year, and a typical transiently homeless person would make around 40 visits a year, then if eg there were 20 transiently homeless people a year for every longtime homeless person, then the makeup of a soup kitchen would be two-thirds transiently homeless.
- scythe 6y agoI'm not making a prediction, I'm explaining an observation. I don't need implication, just inclusion.