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For nearly 20 years, the most frequent estimate bandied about for the number of homeless people living in Montreal was 30,000, based on an incorrect interpretation of a study published in the late 1990s.

On Tuesday, the city released results of its homeless census, which found there were in fact 3,016 people in Montreal living without a home they could call their own on the night of March 24.

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The goal was to provide a more accurate figure on which to base Montreal’s course of action to counter a chronic ailment that afflicts most large municipalities. But it was also seen as a means of countering the negative effects that a vast overestimation had long posed in the fight against homelessness.

“When you talk of 30,000, people will say there is no light at the end of the tunnel. ‘It’s chronic, life’s like that. That’s life,’ ” Montreal Mayor Denis Coderre said. “Now it’s no longer life. It’s not life. We will find tools, we will find solutions together to help people.”