There are *not* 800 people living in the Powderhorn encampments. A non-profit did a survey last week and identified just over 300 ppl who said they were living there. Actually figure could be slightly higher but it’s not 800.

Will have more details in my next story on survey. But the Park Board took the number of tents and guesstimated that roughly more than one but less than two people live in each tent. But that’s hardly an accurate “census.”

Some tents belong to ppl who have moved and some are used for storage. The only way to know how many ppl are in an encampment is to do a survey. Volunteers think they serve meals to about 500 ppl but not all those ppl live in the encampment.

During the 2018 Wilder Survey, surveyors identified around 700 people not living in shelter in all of Hennepin County. The count is always lower than the actual number of people experiencing homelessness and a lot has happened in the past two years, but 800 people in one park...

Back at the Franklin-Hiawatha encampment, people were reporting that there were like 400 ppl living there and then Red Lake did a survey and found it was around 200 people https://www.mprnews.org/story/2018/10/05/red-lake-nation-completes-first-survey-of-franklinhiawatha-encampment

In any case, it's super hard to get a grasp on the extent of homelessness and who is experiencing homelessness. But it's not impossible to get a pretty accurate idea if you actually do a survey and there are not 800 people living in Powderhorn