It’s the end of January and everyone in the homeless biz knows what that means. It’s time for the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Point in Time (PIT) count.
What’s the PIT? That’s a twenty-four-ish hour period, on a day in very late January (generally the coldest of the year), when the federal government tallies the homeless population – except they don’t.
And what makes it a conspiracy? They use accomplices. HUD instructs their employees, funded agency staff and all the volunteers they can round up; to go out into the world and count the un-housed people. It’s brilliant. I mean advocates and outreach folks – on the ground – in every community in the country (with a reputation for caring about the poor) follow the instructions given to them by HUD. Then, by virtue of their participation, the count looks legit.
Seriously, when they come back at the end – it all looks so real – just because of who did the counting. I mean, would you question it? No, you never have.
Ah, such manipulation! Let me give you a lousy metaphor: If you had cancer markers in your blood and I got a surgeon to count the number of moles on your back (eww, right) and he came back and said, “six.” You might assume because he didn’t say any of them were cancerous that you don’t have cancer. A doctor should know, right? You might even be relieved because he’s a surgeon and should know these things!
Even if he came back and said, “I found six and two of them look cancerous,” you might assume you don’t have cancer. Or you might have the two biopsied and when they came back clear, you’d say, “there – I took every precaution and still no cancer.”
Except you could have breast cancer or colon cancer or brain cancer – none of which are detectable by counting your moles. And it doesn’t matter one tiny bit if the moles are counted by a cancer specialist or anyone else, if you don’t look at the other places that cancer can thrive.
Now a cancer specialist might spend a lot of time looking at your skin, under your arms, even through your hair and give his report: “16 moles, none look suspicious… but we know there’s cancer because of the blood work so I need to do a colonoscopy, endoscopy, MRI, etc., to get a definitive answer.” Just as a social worker might come home after a long night of working on the PIT count. He might have been looking under bridges, behind dumpsters, in parking lots and at shelters and come back saying, “We found 90 folks living out and sleeping rough, but we don’t know who was at work. Or who saw us coming and hid. Or went to sleep on a friend’s sofa because they know what night we do the PIT count and they don’t want us telling Youth Services that they live in the car with their kids.”
I’ve been one of those people. The ones who work for the agencies and tell their bosses and their bosses’ bosses that the count is wrong. It’s flawed. Not only does it ignore the realities of the homelessness and employment, but it also ignores the ingenuity of people who don’t want to be found. (There’s likewise a problem with how homelessness is defined, but I’ll leave that aside for this conversation). You know what happens when social workers and volunteers tell their bosses and bosses’ bosses that the PIT count is flawed?
Nothing.
Nothing happens.
The general public doesn’t know. Congress doesn’t even know. The press reports out the numbers collected by the conspirators on behalf of HUD and the lies perpetuate until the next PIT count validates them with more lies.
The cancer metastasizes cause nothing gets done.
(You don’t have to believe me. Read this story about HUD vs U.S. Department of Education count on homelessness – those numbers are far more real).
So anyway, this week, thousands of social workers and their pals took to the streets and counted some folks living in homelessness. When that count becomes public I want you to remember — because of who tallied those souls – the count only looks legit. The advocates are unwilling accomplices conspiring to distort the numbers and no one – NO ONE – in charge wants to change that. If the time comes and you don’t remember what I’m telling you, then congratulations! You’re an accomplice too.
One last thing – they did the count in my community this week (as they did in yours) and I know for a fact – A FACT – that people were missed because they were at work. This doesn’t just keep the number of people experiencing homelessness artificially low – it does a disservice to the people experiencing homelessness by perpetuating the falsehood that homeless folks are just laying around – doing nothing – waiting to be counted.