Veterans Affairs committee  That's a real puzzler. We were surprised to find this, although I caution that the numbers are very small. In the first study on the nature of veteran homelessness, we're talking about an estimated 33 women. It's not very many, so I don't want to draw strong conclusions. I just t

Veterans Affairs committee  HIFIS is like a booking software that is installed at shelters. When someone comes to a shelter and is booked in, their name, date of birth and some information such as veteran status, indigenous status or citizenship is put into the computer. Every quarter, each of the shelter

Veterans Affairs committee  It's always being improved and enhanced. There are updates to the software regularly. New features are added: case management, things that make it useful for the shelters, that kind of stuff. It's an ongoing thing.

Veterans Affairs committee  When I started with HPS in 2009, there was a lot of skepticism about trying to measure homelessness. People thought we were wasting money trying to do this. You're right, though, that when it comes to dealing with the problem—how much money it's going to cost and all that—we need

Veterans Affairs committee  That is a really tough problem. Counting homeless people of any type is very difficult. The point-in-time counts take place in cities. That's one way to get people who are on the streets or in various abandoned buildings or other locations, or living in cars, but it's probably im

Veterans Affairs committee  It was more with homelessness. The veterans issue came up.... What actually happened was that once we started collecting the information on veterans, I thought we had better start doing something with it. We came out with that report. It became public around Christmastime in 2016

Veterans Affairs committee  It is the government's methodology, actually. I developed the methodology for the federal government. I was a public servant for almost nine years working on this. HIFIS, the software I mentioned, is produced by the federal government, and it is deployed in about half the shelter

Veterans Affairs committee  Not specifically of veterans, I'm still doing some work for some communities and the “Canadian Observatory on Homelessness”. It's research on homelessness in general, not specifically of veterans.

Veterans Affairs committee  Thank you for having me here today. My name is Aaron Segaert. I led research for the homeless individuals and families information system from 2009 to 2017. HIFIS is the common term for this. It's a computer system that was built by the federal government and installed at homel