Our next course topic discusses homeless counts. During research on this topic, I came across an article titled “SF homeless count: What it’s like, and why it’s flawed” by Caille Millner. The author discusses her debates with others about if a man was indeed homeless or not during the SF homeless count. They argued that his jacket was too nice to belong to a homeless man, but the author argued that he looked like a drug addict and was obviously homeless. They debated over every person they came across. Who is to know if they are actually homeless? And how did they come to an agreement? I was curious why the coordinators told them to not ask if they were homeless.
Millner stated that the volunteers, including herself, “are forced to make judgments about other people’s poverty” (Millner, 2017). This was difficult for me to accept because I feel that these are the people who are trying to help the homeless, yet they stereotype them as well. Is there a way to count the homeless without stereotyping and judging these human beings?
Many of the books we have read in this course, tell us to stray away from this stereotype, yet these homeless counts do the opposite. I feel that volunteers participating in homeless counts need to be better educated about the homeless. I am curious if there are certain standards that a homeless person has to have to be counted. If I ever participated in a homeless count, I would wonder if I was right or wrong in my count.
Thanks for writing about this! I think it’s so interesting that with homeless counts comes a debate on whether or not someone looks homeless enough. It makes me think about the video of the homeless woman in LA who always had her makeup done. Would she have been overlooked based on her appearance? I wonder if homeless counts are incorrect more times than not because of our perceptions on what homelessness looks like.