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 May 28 – June 30, 2025

The printed Weekly Edition of the Oakland Post: Week of May 28 – June 3, 2025

Published

4 days ago

May 30, 2025

Oakland Post

To enlarge your view of this issue, use the slider, magnifying glass icon or full page icon in the lower right corner of the browser window.

Oakland Post

Posts by Oakland Post

Activism

Oakland Post: Week of May 21 – 27, 2025

The printed Weekly Edition of the Oakland Post: Week of May 21 – 27, 2025

Published

1 week ago

May 25, 2025

Oakland Post

To enlarge your view of this issue, use the slider, magnifying glass icon or full page icon in the lower right corner of the browser window.

Oakland Post

Posts by Oakland Post

Alameda County

Oakland Begins Month-Long Closure on Largest Homeless Encampment

At 8 a.m. sharp, city workers began piling up trash and dismantling makeshift homes along the nearly five-block encampment. City crews blocked off streets from 14th Ave to 17th Ave, between E. 12th and International Blvd, due to the Safe Work Zone Ordinance that was passed by the city council in 2022 to protect workers from harassment during cleanings, according to a city spokesperson.

Published

2 weeks ago

May 18, 2025

Oakland Post

The City of Oakland began sweeping their largest homeless encampment on E 12th St. Monday morning. Advocates claim that the city has not done its due diligence with providing ample resources or outreach for residents at the encampment. Photo by Magaly Muñoz.

By Magaly Muñoz

The City of Oakland began a three-week-long breakdown of the largest homeless encampment in the city on E. 12th Street on Monday morning. Residents and advocates said they are devastated about the displacement of dozens of people.

Jaz Colibri, one of the many advocates at the closure, said the encampment sweeps were “intense and terrifying” to witness. They claimed that several residents, many of them non-English speakers, had not been aware that the sweep was happening that day because of a lack of proper communication and outreach from Oakland.

Colibri added that the city had done a Census “many months ago” and “had not bothered to count people since then”, meaning dozens of individuals have missed out on housing and resources in the last few weeks because the city doesn’t offer outreach in multiple languages.

“Basically, [Oakland] dropped the ball on actually getting to know everybody who lives here and then creating a housing solution that meets everyone’s needs,” Colibri said.

City spokesperson Jean Walsh told the Post that notices of the closure operation were posted in Spanish and Chinese prior to Monday, but did not clarify if outreach was done in those languages as well.

Nearly a dozen Oakland police vehicles, California Highway Patrol officers, and Oakland Public Works staff were gathered along E 12th waiting for residents to pack up their belongings and move away from the area.

Advocates said residents “felt unsafe” due to the hefty law enforcement presence.

One city worker, who was picking up debris near 16th Ave, said, “They’ve known we were coming for a long time now” in reference to resident confusion about the sweeping.

The state doubled down on its requirement to get cities and counties to deal with their homelessness crisis at a press conference Monday afternoon. Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office released a “model ordinance” that is intended to provide a starting point that local municipalities can use to build from and adjust in creating their own policies on encampments, if they haven’t done so yet.

Newsom said “No more excuses, time to deliver” after the state has poured hundreds of millions of dollars into solving the issue.

Oakland was awarded a $7.2 million grant from the state in 2024 to close long-standing encampments in the city, including camps at Martin Luther King, Jr. and 23rd Street, and Mosswood Park.

Residents at these encampments were offered wraparound supportive services, temporary shelter, and eventually will be transitioned to permanent supportive housing, according to a city statement from last year.

Residents who accepted housing at these three encampments were moved into newly acquired property, formerly the Extended Stay America Hotel in West Oakland, which will first serve as interim housing for up to 150 individuals and couples in 105 units, and in the coming year, will be converted into 125 units of permanent housing.

Walsh said as of May 2, “32 residents of the recently closed Mosswood Park encampment moved into the Mandela House program” and as of May 12, “41 residents of the East 12th Street encampment have already accepted offers to move to the Mandela House.” The city will provide final numbers of how many accepted and moved into housing after the closure operation is over.