Homelessness

Question

Does anyone have any good places to look for homelessness data for Canada at any level and for Montreal in particular?

As far as I can tell, the census does not really pick up citizens with no fixed address unless they have been living in a shelter for more than 6 months; and there is no counting of citizens actually living "on the street".

Answers

1. For francophones, an important site is:
http://www.frapru.qc.ca/

They are a community group that advocates on behalf of the homeless.

2. The Census, for the first time in 2001, attempted to get some population counts for persons without a fixed place of residence. The homeless component was investigated in the large urban centres of Canada.

There are some strict reservations about using the data collected. Only one report was created and it is available on the Census web site at the following address:
http://www12.statcan.ca/english/census01/Products/Analytic/companion/coll/contents.cfm

This cautionary note accompanies the data:

In view of the classification issues related to collective dwellings and the census concepts related to usual place of residence, care must be taken in interpreting the data on the census population enumerated in shelters. The census count of the population in shelters should not be interpreted as a count of the "homeless" since homeless persons may well have been enumerated in other types of collective dwellings e.g. hotels, motels, YM/YWCAs, etc. Furthermore, the census count of persons in places classified as shelters does not represent the total population of persons who slept in a shelter on Census Day, since in some cases persons temporarily residing in shelters would have been enumerated at their usual place of residence.