Eugene in Oregon has by far the highest per capita rate of homelessness

Question

Homelessness in US Cities

I've heard this multiple times recently and I can't figure out if this is entirely true. With the data given in this article I suppose it would be true and by a long shot! But I think this is propaganda against Eugene.

Answer 1

Well according to Yahoo Finance and City Mayors it is indeed true, Eugene is estimated to have 432 Homeless people per 100,000 residents (http://www.citymayors.com/society/usa-cities-homelessness.html) This is also agreed on by this source (https://www.insidermonkey.com/blog/25-cities-with-the-highest-homeless-population-per-capita-in-the-us-1311550/11/) However it is important to know that eugenes population is 177 thousand meaning there is around 700 people experiencing homlessness, which when put in perspective is really not that many. So while yes it does by far have the most homless per capita it is not the most homeless people overall. Therefore I will mark it as exaggerated or misleading, also because it is unclear where they even got this information from because every artcile I saw references the same number and in the article from insider monkey it completely gets the math wrong saying "Around 44% (1,182) of the 2,690 homeless adults aged 25-64 in Eugene were experiencing chronic homelessness in January 2022." which would mean that the estimaion of 432 per 100,000 is way off, due to the population being around 177,000.

Comments

The sources you provided were very trustworthy and factual. You did a good job at making the point that Eugene doesn't actually have that many homeless people. You did well at proving that the claim was misleading, especially the information in the article linked, which gave incorrect numbers on the population of Eugene.

---

I think you did a good job in proving the claim, "Eugene in Oregon has by far the highest per capita rate of homelessness" is in fact exaggerated and misleading. You first acknowledeged the claim and then provided statistics from two different sources. Then you further used these stats in comparing them to Eugene's overall populatation proving the point that their homeless population is not the largest. As someone reading your fact check, it was helpful when you broke down the inaccuracy of the information in the article, for it put into perspective just how off the claim is from being true.