How Do Youth Use Homeless Shelters?

Figures & data

Table 1. Homeless shelter use by youth experiencing homelessness

Date of Point in Time Count	Youth, aged 18–24 years			Adults, aged 25 years and above
	PiT	Shelter	Shelter/PiT	PiT	Shelter	Shelter/PiT
January 15, 2014	339	84	24.8	2,862	1,572	54.9
October 16, 2014	271	66	24.4	2,850	1,511	53.0
October 19, 2016	300	54	18.0	2,751	1,434	52.1
April 11, 2018	216	62	28.7	2,392	1,301	54.4

Notes: Youth aged 18–24 years on day of count. Point-in-time count data are from Calgary Homeless Foundation (2014, 2016, 2018).

Figure 1. Patterns of shelter stays.

Table 2. Patterns of shelter use by youth, 2014–2019

Clusters	Transitional	Episodic	Chronic	Total
Sample Size	2,743	320	113	3,176
Percentage of Clients	86.4	10.1	3.6	100
No. of Episodes	1.50 (0.83)	7.03 (2.69)	4.79 (3.16)	2.18 (2.16)
Total No. of Days	13.80 (28.58)	77.89 (65.45)	374.91 (174.77)	33.11 (83.04)
No. of days per episode	9.09 (20.86)	12.31 (11.79)	116.02 (102.27)	13.22 (33.91)
No. of days per episode (%)
1–30	92.4	90.0	4.4	89.0
31–60	4.2	10.0	25.7	5.6
61–90	1.9	0.0	28.3	2.6
91 or more	1.5	0.0	41.6	2.7
No. of Episodes (%)
1	67.6	0.0	7.1	58.6
2	18.9	0.0	15.0	16.9
3	9.3	0.0	22.1	8.8
4	4.2	10.0	17.7	5.3
5	0.0	24.7	6.2	2.7
6 or more	0.0	65.3	31.9	7.7
No. of occupied shelter sleeping beds	37,860	24,924	42,365	105,149
Percentage of occupied sleeping beds	36.0	23.7	40.3	100.0

Note: Numbers in parentheses are standard deviations.–

Table 3. Demographic composition of youth users of shelters

Clusters	Transitional	Episodic	Chronic	Total
Unique Clients	2,743	320	113	3,176
Gender (%)
Male	69.6	65.9	80.5	69.6
Female	30.1	33.1	18.6	30.0
Transgender	0.3	0.9	0.9	0.4
Average Age	21.15 (2.01)	21.30 (1.98)	21.15 (1.95)	21.16 (2.00)
Age Groups (%)
18	13.1	10.9	13.3	12.9
19	13.1	11.9	12.4	12.9
20	13.3	14.4	9.7	13.3
21–22	29.7	29.7	34.5	29.9
23–24	30.8	33.1	30.1	31.0
Ethnicity (%):
Caucasian	50.0	39.7	45.1	48.8
Indigenous	31.5	45.0	28.3	32.6
Other	18.5	15.3	26.5	18.5

Notes: (1) Numbers in parenthesis are standard errors. (2) Age is defined by age on first entry into the shelter system.

Figure 2. First admissions and readmissions of youth into homeless shelters, all ethnicities, 2014–01 to 2019–12.

Calgary Homeless Foundation. (2014). Point-in-time count report, Winter 2014.

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Calgary Homeless Foundation. (2016). Point-in-time count report, Fall 2016.

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Calgary Homeless Foundation. (2018). Calgary point-in-time count report, Spring 2018

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