The homeless count will be carried out using a new information system that will provide faster and more personalized data, said the coordinator of the Homeless Inclusion Strategy.
Currently, it is only at the end of each year that each Local Council for Social Action (CLAS) or Homeless Planning and Intervention Center (NPISA) in the 278 municipalities administers a characterization questionnaire, meaning that the latest known data is for 2022, and in which states that there are 10,773 homeless people.
In an interview with Lusa on the occasion of the publication of the 2022 data, Enrique Joaquim said that the computer information system is already “at the implementation stage through a computer application.”
“This will allow technicians and teams to manage personalized situations or later, we will also be able to get data in a shorter period of time, even in more real time,” he explained.
He added that with this computer tool, technicians who monitor situations will be able to record, “even if they want on the street,” the monitoring that is carried out on each person, or define targets from that point on.
“The tool will be prepared in such a way that at the local, municipal or national level we can extract information at any time that will allow us to make more timely decisions,” he said.
He stressed that one of the goals is for every homeless person to have a case manager, and that this new tool will be one of the first things tracked, noting that it is a “critical point” for the success of the intervention.
He added that the rollout of the new system began “a few weeks ago” and is being extended to “35 centers that work directly with the strategy.”
“The goal is to replace our existing questionnaire data collection methodology with this information system at the end of the year,” said Enrique Joaquim.
When asked whether the number of homeless people could be higher than that recorded in 2022, given that it does not take into account the reality of 2023 and some associations report that they believe the phenomenon could increase, the person in charge replied: “This this perception is normal.”
“This is a very unstable phenomenon, but I remember that last year organizations even felt that although there was a pandemic and then a crisis, the trend did not change significantly. [em anos anteriores]“,” he said, adding that once data for 2023 is available, it will be possible to assess whether this assumption will be confirmed or not.
Enrique Joaquim expressed the hope that data for 2023 will be available at the beginning of 2024 and that from then on it will be possible to have “more reliable information” for the corresponding current year.
According to the coordinator of the Homeless Integration Strategy, the tool is only being implemented now because it was necessary to wait for a positive opinion from the National Data Protection Commission, which “took time because these issues are complex.”