We at The Road Home would like to clarify a statistic that was used in a Guest Opinion article titled: A new path forward to help Utah’s homeless. The stat we would like to clarify is: “On any given night, 62% of the beds at The Road Home are used by homeless clients who are staying at the shelter longer than 6 months.”
The stat, as written, in the article, actually comes from The Road Home’s data as we have it described on our Running Man chart (which is from 2018 – our most recent version). This chart has not been updated or reproduced in the last three years while operating under the new system.
The problem is in the interpretation of the stat that this means that flow is stagnant. While 62% of all beds are being used by people who stay 6 months or more, they only represent 13% of the total population we work with experiencing homelessness. To clarify, 87% of our population stays less than 6 months, which implies a high level of flow out of the system.
Thank you.
