Every person counts. And everyone counted during the City of Tshwane’s first official homeless count, counts! This is a critical moral, political and theological assertion, and insistence. It is also a critical methodological reminder. Losing one survey form, or miscounting, or messing up data, is miscounting one person’s dignity, importance and information. Without such insistence lying at the ground of the count, not only does the accuracy of the count become questionable, but the ethics of commitment to every single person being counted is undermined. This research report reflects on the first city-wide count of persons deemed to be homeless in the City of Tshwane, describing the methodology used and data generated, reflecting critically on the process and content, and making recommendations for future purposes. It reflects on the data, with a view of allowing data to engage critically with current policies and strategies used by government and civil society to try and address homelessness, and also to inform how services and resources might be planned and allocated more appropriately, going forward. The data was shared with stakeholders working in the space of addressing homelessness, but also with people having lived experience of homelessness, to solicit their critical input. Before finalizing the report, we also asked inputs
from core partners and advisors of the process. The Tshwane Homeless Count was not embarked upon because we have too little else to do. Nor was it an empirical research project purely interested in data for data’s sake. Behind the Count lied a strong commitment to contribute to evidence-based interventions, i.e. interventions into the reality of homelessness that is shaped by evidence, strategic in nature, measurable of impact, and intended to end homelessness for as many people as possible, in sustainable ways.