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Here’s what separates you from the homeless, according to NYC

Bums who seek warmth in ATM vestibules or McDonald’s on a frigid night have something in common with New Yorkers sipping champagne in the penthouses above them — they are not considered homeless.

Thousands of volunteers who counted the city’s vagrants early Tuesday — with temperatures below freezing — were ordered to ignore private businesses, even though they are a common refuge.

“Only survey public spaces, not private establishments such as restaurants or ATM booths,” said printed instructions from the Department of Homeless Services for the Homeless Outreach Population Estimate (HOPE).

A list of “General Do’s and Don’ts” also told volunteers not to “go into private establishments (e.g., McDonald’s).”

In addition, about 80 volunteers, including a Post reporter, were told during a training session at Hunter College not to count anyone inside publicly accessible private places.

“Those are the rules. Ignore the homeless people you see indoors,” a leader of the city’s homeless estimate program said.

‘Only survey public spaces, not private establishments such as restaurants or ATM booths.’

 - Department of Homeless Services

The rules run counter to guidelines laid out by the US Department of Housing and Urban Development, which requires the annual street census in order for local governments to receive federal funding.

According to HUD’s 2014 “Point-in-Time Count Methodology Guide,” homeless people are defined as “an individual or family with a primary nighttime residence that is a public or private place not designed for or ordinarily used as a regular sleeping accommodation for human beings, including a car, park, abandoned building, bus or train station, airport or camping ground.”

Several of the city’s volunteers questioned the methodology.

“That’s just the way we’re doing it,” the official said in response.

The city guidelines, which have been in place since 2005, forced one team of volunteers to intentionally lowball the number of vagrants in a 10-square-block section of the Upper East Side.

Seven people were officially counted, but one homeless man who was hanging out in a 24-hour McDonald’s wasn’t included in the tally.

Homeless members of the Picture the Homeless advocacy group blasted the methods as unreliable.

A sleeping homeless man in a New York McDonald’s.David McGlynn

Jazmin Reyes also said she “got counted on the sidewalk outside of Harlem Hospital, but tons of homeless people were sleeping in the ER and they didn’t get counted.”

Results of the HOPE survey aren’t expected for several months.

A spokesman for the city’s Human Resources Administration admitted shortcomings with the program and said they would be addressed by Mayor Bill de Blasio’s “HOME-STAT” initiative, which will include quarterly censuses and a daily canvass of every Manhattan block between Canal and 145th streets.

“We don’t think the HOPE count is enough, so that’s why we are doing HOME-STAT, which will give us better data all year long,” spokesman David Neustadt said.

Neustadt also said that “HUD considers us a national model.”

In a prepared statement, a HUD spokesman said: “HUD’s guidance to Continuums of Care, which references the legal definition of a homeless individual, does not mandate that government agents and volunteers enter private property in order to complete the count.”

“New York City has a robust methodology that includes corrections for potential under-counting resulting from individuals sheltering in privately-owned properties,” HUD spokesman Charles McNally added.