Defining and Counting Homelessness

Drawing on experience from the United States, this chapter explores the challenges at improving global statistics on the extent and nature of homelessness. Definitions and measurements of homelessness have political and ideological dimensions as well as having methodological implications for how homelessness is enumerated. This chapter explores the ways in which the United States moved from definitions and counts focused on street homelessness to much wider and more comprehensive definitions and new ways of finding and accurately counting people experiencing homelessness. This has included the use of increasingly refined PIT (point-in-time) methods. The importance of common administrative systems and data sharing in understanding the nature and extent of homelessness and the characteristics of people experiencing homelessness is also examined. The progress in measurement is considered in relation to some ongoing challenges in measurement. Difficulties still exist in reliably finding populations who can be hidden from standard survey methods, have infrequent contact with administrative systems, and can sometimes be highly mobile.