Homeless

How Accurate is Our Homeless Count?

Published

6 years ago

August 30, 2019

Oakland’s Wood Street curbside community in West Oakland between West Grand Ave and 26th Street is home to many unhoused people, but no one knows exactly how many. Photo by Zack Haber.

Oakland’s population of unhoused residents may be much higher than the July Point- In-Time census that showed a 47% increase over the last count in 2017.

The total of 4,071 of homeless residents made headlines, but unhoused residents, their advocates, and those who’ve studied or participated in the PIT count see its figures as an undercount.

“The PIT count is not designed to be a comprehensive analysis of the homeless population,” said Margaretta Lin, executive director of the Dellums institute and a former Oakland Deputy City Administrator. “But because it’s the only good number we have on homelessness, that number sticks in the public’s imagination.”

The PIT count has been performed every two years in Oakland since The Department of Housing and Urban Development mandated the count for all communities that receive federal funding for homelessness.

The vast majority of PIT totals come from volunteers individually counting homeless people during about three hours on one day. In Oakland, that day is January 30th, early in the morning in the middle of winter, a time when unhoused people who can find temporary shelter would be most likely to.

Alastair Boone, who participated in 2019’s PIT count and wrote about the experience in an article for CityLab, reported that about 600 volunteers and 150 guides participated in the count. She worked with one other volunteer and one guide to search through a residential area in East Oakland but she didn’t find a single homeless person.

While she attributes her inability to find homeless people in the area to the fact that she was in a relatively wealthy neighborhood, she also thinks she missed people.

“We…probably missed people who were hidden from view,” said Boone, “they were in alcoves or cars, or in the homes and apartments of friends and relatives, sleeping on couches and floors.”

The discrepancy between the total PIT count increases of unsheltered and temporarily sheltered residents also suggests that temporarily sheltered residents are especially undercounted. While PIT’s count of unsheltered homeless residents increased 59% from 3,210 to 4,071 between the 2017 and 2019 counts, its counts of sheltered homeless residents in those years remained almost exactly the same. In 2017 PIT’s total temporarily sheltered homeless count was 859; in 2019 it was 861.

According to a 2017 report by The National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty (NLCHP), since PIT counts use the amount of filled beds in homeless shelters to measure its count of sheltered homeless residents, they can’t do an accurate measure in areas like Oakland where beds at shelters are generally filled to capacity.

“The count of sheltered homeless individuals indicates a city’s supply of shelter beds rather than the demand for shelter or housing” the NLCHP report reads.

Since the PIT count generally uses the same methodology, Margaretta Lin thinks it can be effective to measure trends and fluctuations in homeless population but she also feels more studies and alternate methods of counting should be used to get a more accurate count.

She pointed out that a 2014-2015 study conducted by Alameda County’s Healthcare for the Homeless (ACHCH) found that 18,000 people were homeless while the 2015 PIT summary counted just 4,040.

ACHCH’s count was determined by measuring how many homeless people used county services instead of counting homeless people on one day.

James Vann of the Homeless Advocacy Working Group (HAWG) says the organization estimates Oakland’s current homeless population at between 9,000 and 11,000. HAWG has identified 92 encampments, which they define as any group of four or more people living together unhoused, and does regular counts at them.

“Our count is a real increase from two years ago,” Vann said, “when we counted between 40 and 45 encampments.”

Zack Haber

Posts by Zack Haber

Activism

Oakland Post: Week of March 28 – April 1, 2025

The printed Weekly Edition of the Oakland Post: Week of March 28 – April 1, 2025

Published

6 days ago

March 28, 2025

Oakland Post

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Oakland Post

Posts by Oakland Post

Activism

We Fought on Opposite Sides of the Sheng Thao Recall. Here’s Why We’re Uniting Behind Barbara Lee for Oakland Mayor

Today, we are coming together to do all we can to make sure Barbara Lee is elected Mayor in the April 15 Oakland special election. Here’s why. Now more than ever, Oakland needs a respected, hands-on leader who will unite residents behind a clear vision for change. The next mayor will have to hit the ground running with leaders and stakeholders across our political divide to get to work solving the problems standing in the way of Oakland’s progress. Job No. 1: improving public safety. Everyone agrees that all Oaklanders deserve to feel safe in their neighborhoods. But sadly, too many of us do not.

Published

1 week ago

March 24, 2025

Oakland Post

Robert Harris (left) is a retired attorney at PG&E and former legal counsel for NAACP. Richard Fuentes is co-owner of FLUID510 and chair of the Political Action Committee, American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) Council 57. Courtesy photos.

By Robert Harris and Richard Fuentes
Special to The Post

The City of Oakland is facing a number of urgent challenges, from housing and public safety to a pressing need for jobs and economic development. One of us, Robert Harris, supported the November recall vote that removed Mayor Sheng Thao from office. Meanwhile, Richard Fuentes believed the recall was the wrong strategy to tackle Oakland’s challenges.

Today, we are coming together to do all we can to make sure Barbara Lee is elected Mayor in the April 15 Oakland special election. Here’s why.

Now more than ever, Oakland needs a respected, hands-on leader who will unite residents behind a clear vision for change.

The next mayor will have to hit the ground running with leaders and stakeholders across our political divide to get to work solving the problems standing in the way of Oakland’s progress.

Job No. 1: improving public safety. Everyone agrees that all Oaklanders deserve to feel safe in their neighborhoods. But sadly, too many of us do not.

During her three decades in the state Legislature and Congress, Lee made public safety a priority, securing funding for police and firefighters in Oakland, delivering $15.8 million in community safety funding, and more. Today, she has a plan for making Oakland safer. It starts with making sure police are resourced, ready, and on patrol to stop the most dangerous criminals on our streets.

Oakland residents and business owners are feeling the impact of too many assaults, smash/grabs, retail thefts, and home robberies. Lee will increase the number of police on the streets, make sure they are focused on the biggest threats, and invest in violence prevention and proven alternatives that prevent crime and violence in the first place.

In addition, on day one, Barbara Lee will focus on Oakland’s business community, creating an advisory cabinet of business owners and pushing to ensure Oakland can attract and keep businesses of all sizes.

The other top issue facing Oakland is housing and homelessness. As of May 2024, over 5,500 people were unhoused in the city. Oaklanders are just 25% of the population of Alameda County, but the city has 57% of the unhoused population.

Unhoused people include seniors, veterans, single women, women with children, people who suffer physical and mental illness, unemployed and undereducated people, and individuals addicted to drugs. Some are students under 18 living on the streets without their parents or a guardian. Research shows that 53% of Oakland’s homeless population is Black.

Starting on her first day in office, Lee will use her national profile and experience to bring new resources to the city to reduce homelessness and expand affordable housing. And she will forge new public/private partnerships and collaboration between the City, Alameda County, other public agencies, and local nonprofits to ensure that Oakland gets its fair share of resources for everything from supportive services to affordable housing.

Besides a public safety and housing crisis, Oakland has a reputational crisis at hand. Too many people locally and nationally believe Oakland does not have the ability to tackle its problems.

Lee has the national reputation and the relationships she can use to assert a new narrative about our beloved Oakland – a vibrant, diverse, and culturally rich city with a deep history of activism and innovation.

Everyone remembers how Lee stood up for Oakland values as the only member of Congress not to authorize the disastrous Iraq War in 2001. She has led the fight in Congress for ethics reform and changes to the nation’s pay-to-play campaign finance laws.

Lee stands alone among the candidates for mayor as a longtime champion of honest, transparent, and accountable government—and she has the reputation and the skills to lead an Oakland transformation that puts people first.

The past few years have been a trying period for our hometown.

Robert Harris supported the recall because of Thao’s decision to fire LeRonne Armstrong; her refusal to meet with certain organizations, such as the Oakland Branch of the NAACP; and the city missing the deadline for filing for a state grant to deal with serious retail thefts in Oakland.

Richard Fuentes opposed the recall, believing that Oakland was making progress in reducing crime. The voters have had their say; now, it is time for us to move forward together and turn the page to a new era.

The two of us don’t agree on everything, but we agree on this: the next few years will be safer, stronger, and more prosperous if Oaklanders elect Barbara Lee as our next mayor on April 15.

Robert Harris is a retired attorney at PG&E and former legal counsel for NAACP.

Richard Fuentes is co-owner of FLUID510 and chair of the Political Action Committee, American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) Council 57.