“Every year, the U.S. counts its homeless population and we do it on one day… But that is how many homeless people there are in America on that night. The problem is that homelessness isn't a state problem. It's a flow problem. You have new people entering homelessness every day. You've got people exiting homelessness every day. And you've got people oftentimes returning, so cycling.”
Oxide and Friends · Hands-On Engineering Podcasts · October 2026
Harlan, who builds software for social service providers, is explaining why homelessness is a "wicked problem." The official point-in-time count, taken on a single night, captures far fewer people than experience homelessness over a year. Many of them are briefly on friends' couches, not on the street.
Transcript
…can happen, which is you think that you've organized a system and you've put it together so well that it couldn't have a problem. And then when a problem emerges, you have no way to handle it because you are no longer applying expertise, which is like what the complicated and complex realms are all
…observations was that trying to define the problem implies a certain solution to it. And then using canonical examples like poverty and homelessness as wicked problems, because they're so multifaceted. And we have a hard time even agreeing what the problem is, let alone what the solutions are.
…of it as a state problem. Like every year, the U.S. counts its homeless population and we do it on one day. It's called the pit or the point in time count. And people go out all around the country and they go out and they go, you know, into parks and under bridges and to shelters and they add it all up and that becomes the official record of like, there are this many homeless people in America. But that is how many homeless people there are in America on that night. The problem is that homelessness isn't a state problem. It's a flow problem. You have new people entering homelessness every day. You've got people exiting homelessness every day. And you've got people oftentimes returning, so cycling. And in a world where it's constant, so the number of people that experience homelessness in a year, and homelessness is also quite broadly defined, but is vastly greater than the pit count because many people experience homelessness for a few months. And homelessness might be, I have no place to stay. I'm going to crash on friends' couches. And, you know, homelessness is not always like, I think…
right, exactly. And so the, the, what they, in addition to also, I think, uh, uh, being against data centers, I think is the other thing that this like at the moment is transcending all political boundaries. Um, interesting, right? The one, I mean, because it's, I mean, who wants administrative…
No, no, no, no, I'm saying the opposite. I'm saying that they both want it,
they both want administrative burden. I'm serious. They both want it.
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