What’s the Temperature?
If you tell us the average temperature in Racine, WI for a given month over the last few years (or even project into the future), we can give you an estimate of how many people were or might be living on the streets. We have always known that the number of people living on the streets decreases dramatically in the winter and increases again in the summer. From our semi annual Point-in-Time data, we know that people who are unsheltered make up about 4% of the Racine’s homeless population in January and 7% - 10% in late July. We decided to explore the relationship between seasons and unsheltered homelessness further.
We took the number of individuals with whom our street outreach team had contact for each month from October 2016 to September 2020. We then took the average temperature for each of those months. We found that the number of people living on the streets in Racine during any given month was the average temperature for that month (in Fahrenheit) multiplied by 0.63. If we consider that we only counted people with whom we had contact and that there might have been a few more that we didn’t see, can can say that the number of people on the streets in Racine during any given month is roughly half of the average temperature for that month. This specific to the number of people homeless in Racine and would not apply directly to other communities, but we assume the general principle is the same: When it gets colder, many people find a way to get off the streets one way or another.
The data held true for most months, whether summer or winter. The one month that was unusual was the polar vortex in January 2019. That is the only month when the number of people unsheltered in Racine was markedly higher than the average temperature. We did street outreach during the polar vortex and there were only a couple of people unsheltered. What happened in that month was unusually high temperatures early in the month followed by the polar vortex at the end of the month, resulting in an average temperature that doesn’t reflect the severity of the extreme cold experienced during the vortex.
So what was the average temperature in Racine last month? Divide that by two and that is approximately how many people were living on the streets at some point during the month.
