Making sense of the decrease in Homelessness - I myself have been a past skeptic of our homeless count as we for many years did not do a scientific study, but we have done four counts in Sacramento County in the last five years and they have all used the same HUD approved statistical analysis that has been tested particularly in New York and other cities and found to be 85-90% accurate. So, there are your numbers Tom. The count isn't perfect, but it's the best tool we have for counting this very difficult group of people to count and we have continued to improve our count every time, using more volunteers, counting more areas throughout the county, etc. The reason we have documented a decrease is, I believe, we've housed over 600 chronic homeless people over four years in permanent supportive housing as part of the Ten Year Plan to End Homelessness and in the 16 months leading up to this count we used Federal stimulus funding for a Homeless Prevention & Rapid Re-housing Program (that has now almost run out of funds) to house another 1600 households. You would hope that these types of monumental efforts would have an effect and indeed this count shows that there are solutions to homelessness and that we have turned a corner and the number of homeless people has started to decrease. The previous three counts mostly showed increases in the overall homeless population (though also a steady decrease in the chronic homeless) and advocates didn't complain so much about the numbers then. Tim Brown, Sacramento Steps Forward

I guess I'm getting use to Mr. Armstrong making up facts and chronically complaining without providing any real leadership on the issue of homelessness. Points of fact: 1) By December 1st we will have more winter shelter options than last year and most of them will be places where folks can stay 24/7 and not be put out during the day. 2) At this year's Homeless Connect event we had over 700 homeless people, one hundred more than the year before, but Tom wasn't there so he wouldn't know this. Tim Brown