54% Doubled Up
24% Shelters
7% Hotels/Motels
3% Unsheltered
10% Unknown/Other

The homeless numbers included people displaced by Hurricane Katrina. My city received a large number of these residents and we saw the mayor of New Orleans here regularly. These displaced people were provided lodgings in nice motels and hotels and provided living expenses and enrolled in our schools. It appears that most got better jobs here than they could in New Orleans. There is no reason to include them as homeless.

The numbers from the report Matt used included data provided by school systems receiving grants, thus imparing their independence. To identify the homeless, the primary nighttime residence of students was considered “only at the time of enrollment.” No adjustments were made during the year for people being settled. No adjustments were made for students who lived with relatives to get into better systems. None of the numbers were independently audited.

I’m swamped, so I’m not going to go into the data any further, but the seriousness of the problem is exaggerated when you compare the perceptions advanced versus the reality. When 100% of the absolute numbers are said to be “homeless,” but only 3% of them are actually unsheltered, then the problem is overstated.

This is typical of what we see in liberal journalism. Celeste throws out $5-7 trillion for Iraq costs. Others say that Bush has cost 2 million deaths. AIDS and global warming statistics are always stretched to the max. And, others say that there are 0.9 million homeless school kids in the nation. Well, 3% of 0.9 million is roughly 27,000, and they don’t stay homeless all year.

I can be more sympathetic to causes that are accurately reported, but I become suspicious when I find something else when you get the full information. It’s like hearing about someone being under sniper fire in Bosnia, and then finding out the truth. One can become quite cynical about reports out of California and government when they regularly misrepresent the truth–either intentionally or by error.

A major responsibility of a journalist is to verify his information and to be completely truthful–not to make a story out of something that isn’t one or to accept unreasonable numbers just to add to a story and without providing the methodology of gathering those statistics to the readers.

More research into the numbers on this story give a different and less menacing picture than those reported.

Now, to address my question as I put it, how many of the homeless families with school kids on the streets are in this country illegally? I think that Celeste and Rebel Girl don’t want a straight answer on this. It would force liberals to deal with the true problem rather than just the sympton.

Rebel Girl, always happy to see you here, and love your comments whenever they occur. As for the squabbling and brick throwing, think of it as theater.

I LOVE reading this blog but I seldom post comments, or seldom engage in any discourse, because of the tenor so many of the comments take on.