Accenture opens new corporate office in Detroit's downtown

[bust]

2,078?

Is that some kind of per capita figure? Certainly there are more than 2,100 homeless people in Detroit. I might believe 21,000. Or don't they count those squatting in shelled out remnants of what used to be homes?

I'm pretty sure that count only includes people city government employees personally found in their "point in time count" survey, walking around trying to find people living in the street. That doesn't include people taking shelter in the abundance of abandoned homes. And last year they conducted the survey in the dead of winter, on January 31. The low temperature was 12 degrees that night! In other words a tiny tiny tiny fraction of the reality. [[If you think the census undercounts the homeless...)

Tasha Gray, Executive Director of the Detroit Homeless Action Network, said that’s the lowest count they've seen “in a number of years.” But she also said Detroit's actual homeless population is around 14,000.

I don't have a bone to pick in this debate, but you probably know by now I'm a stickler for facts.

Among the many reasons the homeless are much more visible in San Francisco is abandoned homes are practically nonexistent, the city is four times denser, unused space barely exists, and the weather never gets so cold.

Also, services for the homeless in San Francisco are pretty great compared to most cities'.

According to Jeff Kositsky, director of San Francisco's Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing, there are about 20,000 homeless people living in San Francisco at one time or another per year.

Detroit has a population of 673,000. San Francisco's is 884,000 [[in an area less than a third as big as Detroit). Using Gray and Kositsky's numbers that puts Detroit's per capita homeless population at 2.1%. And it puts San Francisco's at 2.3%. That's not much of a difference, despite all the good reasons why it's better to be homeless over there.

Detroit leaders credit "housing first" strategy with reducing homelessness
http://www.michiganradio.org/post/de...g-homelessness

What it really costs to help the homeless. And how businesses can do more
https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/...s-13178743.php

Wow, we're off topic, eh?