> The city has a homeless population of around 8-10 thousand and spends around $1.1b a year on services I don't trust these numbers, or at least how meaningfu

> The city has a homeless population of around 8-10 thousand and spends around $1.1b a year on services I don't trust these numbers, or at least how meaningful they are. Vancouver officially has a similar homeless population, but on a sunny day you can go to the downtown eastside and see 8000 people who you might assume are homeless. Maybe some of them are sleeping in cars, or SROs, or squats, and don't identify as homeless. Or they're currently in jail, incarcerated, a hospital, or a mental health facility, and also don't get counted towards the number. The number is entirely determined by groups that come up with them coordinating an effort to go out over a 24 hour period and ask people if they're homeless. Whoever says yes gets added to the count. I think the number would be more meaningful if they instead asked people about their living conditions, and came up with a number of people who fall below some basic standard of housing (possibly a combination of: >100 sq ft per person, working stove, working bathroom, working utilities)