2020 HUD PIT Homeless Data: Did Oregon and Washington Really Have1/5th of All Unsheltered Homeless Children in the US?.

HUD has finally released the 2020 point in time homeless counts. 

Before looking at individual Oregon continuum of care data, I noticed that the Oregon's share of unsheltered homeless children under 18 is disproportionately higher than their share of total children under the age of 18 in all states. (That is also true for Washington, California, and Idaho along with another 5 states).

I created a sorted table that shows states where the state share of unsheltered homeless children under 18 is higher than their share of all children under 18 in all states. (Among all states I noted that Oregon is only behind California in the count of unsheltered children under 18).

That table pasted below shows that in 2020:   

1. Oregon counted 1,182 unsheltered homeless children under 18. That’s 11.9% of the 9,970 unsheltered children reported in ALL states.
2. Combined with Washington’s 1,145 unsheltered homeless children under 18 Oregon and Washington had 23.3% of all unsheltered homeless children under 18 in ALL states. That's more than 1/5th of the total unsheltered children under 18 in ALL states.  
3. Oregon’s share of all children under 18 in all states is 1.2%
4. If Oregon had 1.2% of all of its children under 18 who were unsheltered homeless that  unsheltered homeless count would be 118 . That’s 1,064 less than the actual count of 1,182.

Some Possibilities:

1. Oregon (and the other states in the table) are doing a much better job of counting unsheltered homeless children than in other states.
2. In some CoC’s Oregon is counting/extrapolating counts of unsheltered homeless children in ways that are different than other states. [I suspect this is the primary reason]. 
3. Existing housing and homeless policies, and economic conditions in several western states have resulted in greater numbers of unsheltered homeless children.

Originally created and posted on the Oregon Housing Blog.