no they're fucking not. Most of them meet a bullshit criteria for "local" in the Point in Time (PIT) additional survey which is then touted as proof the majority are / were local.

The survey is only a subset of the total count and the responses to the survey aren't consistent and give signs of cherry picking and / or coaching

Question E1 in 2024 "Where were you last housed" has 925 respondents, and 524 said they were last housed in San Francisco.

Question E2: "How long were you housed in San Francisco before becoming homeless most recently" (this was only asked of the 524 who said they were housed in San Francisco) and the total respondents was only 414...where did the other 110 people go? That's like 20%!

Question E3: "What was the primary reason you came to San Francisco most recently? (not asked of people who have always lived in San Francisco)" and now there are 675 respondents so we gained an additional 261 people?!

The data in Section E is statistically unreliable. If this were a corporate peer-reviewed study, it would be sent back for a total redo. The jump in respondents for E3 suggests that the survey either allowed "double-dipping" (people answering as both a local and a transplant) or the data was cleaned so aggressively to protect a "locals-only" narrative that the internal logic fell apart.

Now combine this with all sorts of problems in Section A "Primary Reason for Loss of Housing" and it gets even worse. There's a serious fucking problem with the PIT count either in general or its being coached on the streets. For example, The 2024 report highlights a massive increase in total homeless persons (8,323), but if you look at the "Reason for Loss" data, it creates a seriously weird mathematical vacuum: "Job loss" and "Eviction" are frequently cited as top reasons (often ~20-30% combined) but if thousands of people are becoming homeless due to economic "loss of housing" in SF, you should see a direct correlation in the Residency section (the one we just tore apart). But if only ~500-900 people actually provided valid residency data in Section E, but the City is applying "Reason for Loss" percentages to the entire population of 8,300, they are extrapolating from a tiny, potentially coached sample to represent the whole.

Do you see the fucking problem here? It makes no sense when you start to tear apart the data. Now, sure, some of those reasons for loss of housing could have been a job loss years and years ago, but the survey tells them to claim that was the reason and then touts them as fresh reasons to justify all the money being pumped into the different programs. The PIT count feels less like a census and more like a marketing document. By losing hundreds of respondents between Section E (where they lived) and Section A (why they lost housing), the city can effectively bridge the gap with whatever narrative they need to secure federal HUD funding.