So, Radio NZ has a story based on a commentary at YaleGlobal on homelessness.
The point of the YaleGlobal piece is that homelessness is increasing as the world gets more urbanised, and that it’s really hard to measure because people define it differently and because some countries don’t want it measured accurately. Overall
Based on national reports, it’s estimated that no less than 150 million people, or about 2 percent of the world’s population, are homeless. However, about 1.6 billion, more than 20 percent of the world’s population, may lack adequate housing.
There’s obviously a lot of room for variation in definitions.
This report isn’t Yale research, really. It’s based on OECD figures, which are reported by governments: the OECD HC3-1 indicator (PDF). The number for New Zealand is 41705, which we’ve seen last year in the NZ media. It comes from the 2013 census, and was estimated by researchers at Otago. The NZ homelessness number is high for at least three reasons. First, NZ uses a very broad definition of homelessness. Second, we’re pretty good at honest data collection. And, third, we’ve got a serious homelessness problem (and have had for a while).
The Government is right to say that the international figures aren’t all comparable. Some countries only count people who are sleeping rough. Others include people in shelters or emergency accomodation. We include a lot more. The Herald story from last year quotes an Otago researcher, Kate Amore
“If the homeless population were a hundred people, 70 are staying with extended family or friends in severely crowded houses, 20 are in a motel, boarding house or camping ground, and 10 are living on the street, in cars, or in other improvised dwellings.”
From that tally, a few countries don’t even count all of the 10; some don’t count all of the 20; many don’t count the 70 — and some aren’t very good at counting.
Here’s a set of charts I made based on a crude classification of definitions from the OECD HC3-1 report. The numbers on the axis are in % of the population.
Even within the top panel, NZ, the Czech Republic, and Australia have the broadest definitions. The HC3-1 report says
Australia, the Czech Republic and New Zealand report a relatively large incidence of homelessness, and this is partly explained by the fact that these countries adopt a broad definition of homelessness. In Australia people are considered as homeless if they have “no other options to acquire safe and secure housing are without shelter, in temporary accommodation, sharing accommodation with a household or living in uninhabitable housing”. In the Czech Republic the term homeless covers “persons sleeping rough (roofless), people who are not able to procure any dwelling and hence live in accommodation for the homeless, and people living in insecure accommodation and people staying in conditions which do not fulfil the minimum standards of living […]”. In New Zealand homelessness is defined as “living situations where people with no other options to acquire safe and secure housing: are without shelter, in temporary accommodation, sharing accommodation with a household or living in uninhabitable housing.”
I think the New Zealand definition is a good one for measuring the housing deprivation problem, but it’s not good for international comparisons.
On the other hand, the comparison to Australia is pretty fair, and there’s at least no evidence that anywhere else has higher rates. To some extent we have an apples vs oranges comparison, but that doesn’t stop us concluding it’s a bad apple.