Changes coming for Winnipeg homeless census after number of volunteers plummets

Changes to the tally of Winnipeg's homeless population are coming this year, after organizers say a drop in volunteers from pre-pandemic levels likely skewed the most recent results.

The Winnipeg street census, conducted roughly every two years, draws data from local shelters and organizations, as well as an in-person survey conducted on the streets, in order to provide a snapshot of the number of people experiencing homelessness in the city.

Detailed plans for this year's street census have yet to be announced, but End Homelessness Winnipeg's Elijah Osei-Yeboah says it will shift away from relying on volunteers to conduct the survey.

The 2015 survey identified over 1,500 people experiencing homelessness, while the 2022 survey counted around 1,250 — but it also had far fewer volunteers.

About 300 trained volunteers helped conduct the first two street censuses in 2015 and 2018, but following the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, that number dropped to 160 volunteers in 2022.

"There is a chance that it might have affected the number of people that we were able to reach," said Osei-Yeboah, who is End Homelessness Winnipeg's manager for evaluation and shared measurement.

He says it's an issue that goes beyond Winnipeg, with homeless census organizations across Canada planning to decrease their dependence on volunteers this year amid drops in participation.

Undercounting the number of people without stable housing in a given area leads to an incomplete picture of the homeless population, said Cheryl Forchuk, a professor at the University of Western Ontario and lead researcher of Homelessness Counts.

"If you don't know who's homeless, then you don't know what the appropriate strategies are" to help them, she said.

"There's many different subpopulations that really need different strategies in order to help them," said Forchuk, including veterans, sex workers, and people suffering from dementia or learning disabilities.

The census is also important for many agencies that rely on the findings for their funding proposals, said Osei-Yeboah.

This year, End Homelessness Winnipeg will recruit about 100 volunteers for the street census, but will also partner with community outreach teams, since they require less training and are more familiar with where to find people who are homeless, he said.

The federal government is also giving organizations across the country more time to conduct the counts, he said. In the past, counts were conducted over a 24-hour period.

That may increase to as much as 30 days, said Osei-Yeboah, but the Winnipeg street census is likely to be completed in about four days, because a longer period means a higher risk of surveying the same people twice. Unique identifiers will be given to each participant to limit repeat takers.

Some groups likely undercounted

There are also plans to partner with organizations to reach more newcomers this year, after realizing the size of that population was probably underestimated in 2022, said Osei-Yeboah.

Newcomers accounted for just over a quarter of Winnipeg's population in Statistics Canada's 2021 census, but together, newcomers and refugees made up just three per cent of the people contacted in the 2022 street census.

He also said there was likely an underestimate in the past in the number of people who leave government institutions — particularly child and family services, hospitals and correctional facilities — and end up homeless, he said.

Those experiencing what's called "hidden homelessness" — people couch surfing with friends or staying with family members — are also likely undercounted, he said. The authors of the 2022 census's final report suggested they missed at least 4,000 people in that group.

"To be able to capture that accurately, you would have to knock on every door in Winnipeg to find out if someone staying in the house is experiencing that type of homelessness," Osei-Yeboah said.

An evaluation is done after each census, often leading to changes to the methodology, he said. But those changes mean it's hard to make comparisons from one census to the next to determine whether the issue in Winnipeg is getting better or worse.

"I know we haven't gotten to the point where we can confidently determine trends, but the hope is we'll get to that point," he said.

Forchuk says there may never be a silver-bullet methodology that will pinpoint the number of people who are experiencing homelessness in a given area.

"Despite anyone's best efforts, we will always miss some people, because somebody could be on the couch of a friend."

Some homeless people are difficult to find because they move around each day, she said, while others don't want to be found and may try to hide obvious signs of homelessness.

"I've known people who were homeless that would literally wear a suit and carry a briefcase to not be seen as homeless," Forchuk said.

While street census numbers cannot yet be compared, Osei-Yeboah says a clear finding is how vastly over-represented Indigenous people are in Winnipeg's homeless population. Indigenous people made up nearly 70 per cent of the people surveyed in 2022, that year's report says.

Housing investments, including transitional housing for incarcerated people, are clearly needed, Osei-Yeboah said. So are supports to keep young people in school and with their families.

"We need to invest in family reunification," he said.