A new method for counting homeless people is offering a clearer look at the magnitude of the social issue, with preliminary results indicating the country's homeless population could be three times higher than current estimates.
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"Not everybody is found," said Forchuk, whose institute is affiliated with Western University. "A lot of people experiencing homelessness do not choose to access shelters, or there isn't capacity." Forchuk's research began in Ontario, and is now being expanded across the country; it includes interviews with front-line community service workers and hundreds of homeless people.
Liz Corney, co-founder and director of Development for Blooming House, said that when her eight-bed women's shelter opened in Charlottetown in 2019, she wasn't sure how many homeless women were in the region. Other community groups, she added, also didn't have a grasp on the numbers. In the throes of an acute homeless crisis across Canada, determining the exact number of the homeless population isn't every shelter operator's main concern, however.
Warren Maddox, executive director of Fredericton Homeless Shelters Inc., disagrees that analyzing health-care data is the most accurate way to obtain a full portrait of the country's homeless population. He said a manual list of everyone who accesses homeless services -- also called a by-names list -- is the best tool for capturing people living on the broad spectrum of homelessness, from people in shelters, transitional spaces, or who are living rough.
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