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The city’s second homeless census has painted a picture of when homelessness tends to start and who it tends to happen to.

The final report on the 2018 Winnipeg Street Census was released Wednesday and showed that the most frequent age an individual experiences homelessness is 18 and over half experiencing homelessness have been in the care of Child and Family Services at one point in their lives.

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Furthermore, the study’s findings showed that two-thirds (65.9%) of those surveyed were Indigenous and of those, 58.5% has spent time in the child welfare system.

“That really paints a picture of what it looks like to be homeless and that it starts early and that it has systemic reasons, and colonization is a big one of those,” said Brent Retzlaff, research and evaluation coordinator at Siloam Mission and a member of the Street Census Steering Council.

About half of those who said they had been in CFS care were homeless immediately upon leaving the system at 18. That number rises to over 60% in the first year of graduating out of the child welfare system.