New effort aims to count all California homeless students
“But those numbers have been determined to undercount how many students are in need of housing every year. Identifying them is often the toughest hurdle, and what AB 27 aims to do is ensure that all homeless students are counted by school personnel by providing a standard method that all schools can use to learn how many of their students are living with housing insecurity.
It’s difficult to get an accurate count of homeless students for several reasons, including that the information is self-reported and that some families are reluctant to share their housing status with school personnel. Plus, the federal definition of homelessness, which is part of AB 27, considers a family homeless if they are staying with relatives or in temporary housing due to economic hardship, loss of housing or a similar reason. Those families may not consider themselves homeless.”