IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/evarev/v31y2007i2p166-199.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

A Repeated Observation Approach for Estimating the Street Homeless Population

Author

Listed:
  • Brent Berry

    (University of Toronto)

Abstract

Risks of life on the street caused by inclement weather, harassment, and assault threaten the unsheltered homeless population. We address some challenges of enumerating the street homeless population by testing a novel capture-recapture (CR) estimation approach that models individuals' intermittent daytime visibility. We tested walking and vehicle-based variants of CR in downtown Toronto in March. Estimates that assume individual variability of sighting probabilities are most consistent with our knowledge of the homeless and achieve the most favorable confidence intervals, estimated detection probabilities, and coefficient of variation. Estimation bias from interobserver discrepancies, duplicate counting, and violation of the closed population assumption were minimized with uniform identification criteria, training, and sampling design. Bias caused by the social grouping of the homeless was small. Despite the limitations of visual identification, CR approaches as part of a multiple-method program can aid community responses to immediate needs on the street, especially during the harsh winter months.

Suggested Citation

  • Brent Berry, 2007. "A Repeated Observation Approach for Estimating the Street Homeless Population," Evaluation Review, , vol. 31(2), pages 166-199, April.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:evarev:v:31:y:2007:i:2:p:166-199
    DOI: 10.1177/0193841X06296947
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0193841X06296947
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/0193841X06296947?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Phelan, J.C. & Link, B.G., 1999. "Who are 'the homeless'? Reconsidering the stability and composition of the homeless population," American Journal of Public Health, American Public Health Association, vol. 89(9), pages 1334-1338.
    2. Beáta Dávid & Tom Snijders, 2002. "Estimating the Size of the Homeless Population in Budapest, Hungary," Quality & Quantity: International Journal of Methodology, Springer, vol. 36(3), pages 291-303, August.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. M. Braga & L. Corno, 2011. "Being Homeless: Evidence from Italy," Giornale degli Economisti, GDE (Giornale degli Economisti e Annali di Economia), Bocconi University, vol. 70(3), pages 33-73, December.
    2. Lucia Corno, 2012. "Peer Effects on Criminal Behavior. Evidence from the homeless," Norface Discussion Paper Series 2012015, Norface Research Programme on Migration, Department of Economics, University College London.
    3. A. M. Coumans & M. Cruyff & P. G. M. Heijden & J. Wolf & H. Schmeets, 2017. "Estimating Homelessness in the Netherlands Using a Capture-Recapture Approach," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 130(1), pages 189-212, January.
    4. Amelia Hoover Green & Patrick Ball, 2019. "Civilian killings and disappearances during civil war in El Salvador (1980‒1992)," Demographic Research, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany, vol. 41(27), pages 781-814.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Anita Hubley & Lara Russell & Anita Palepu & Stephen Hwang, 2014. "Subjective Quality of Life Among Individuals who are Homeless: A Review of Current Knowledge," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 115(1), pages 509-524, January.
    2. Devin Q. Rutan & Matthew Desmond, 2021. "The Concentrated Geography of Eviction," The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, , vol. 693(1), pages 64-81, January.
    3. John M. Quigley & Steven Raphael, 2001. "The Economics Of Homelessness: The Evidence From North America," European Journal of Housing Policy, Taylor and Francis Journals, vol. 1(3), pages 323-336.
    4. John M. Quigley & Steven Raphael & Eugene Smolensky, 2001. "Homeless In America, Homeless In California," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 83(1), pages 37-51, February.
    5. A. M. Coumans & M. Cruyff & P. G. M. Heijden & J. Wolf & H. Schmeets, 2017. "Estimating Homelessness in the Netherlands Using a Capture-Recapture Approach," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 130(1), pages 189-212, January.
    6. S. J. Farrell & E. D. Reissing, 2004. "Picking Up the Challenge," Evaluation Review, , vol. 28(2), pages 144-155, April.
    7. Cobb-Clark, Deborah A. & Herault, Nicolas & Scutella, Rosanna & Tseng, Yi-Ping, 2016. "A journey home: What drives how long people are homeless?," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 91(C), pages 57-72.
    8. Vincent A. Fusaro & Helen G. Levy & H. Luke Shaefer, 2018. "Racial and Ethnic Disparities in the Lifetime Prevalence of Homelessness in the United States," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 55(6), pages 2119-2128, December.
    9. Rosanna Scutella & Guy Johnson, 2012. "Locating and Designing 'Journeys Home': A Literature Review (Journeys Home: A Longitudinal Study of Factors Affecting Housing Stability)," Melbourne Institute Working Paper Series wp2012n11, Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research, The University of Melbourne.
    10. Martijn, Claudine & Sharpe, Louise, 2006. "Pathways to youth homelessness," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 62(1), pages 1-12, January.
    11. Gomez, José Andrés & Merino, Bernat Roig & Tur, Antonio Aledo, 2010. "The identity of sociology or what to do when the universe is unknown: qualitative solutions against the quantitative obsession," Spatial and Organizational Dynamics Discussion Papers 2010-9, CIEO-Research Centre for Spatial and Organizational Dynamics, University of Algarve.
    12. Padgett, Deborah K., 2007. "There's no place like (a) home: Ontological security among persons with serious mental illness in the United States," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 64(9), pages 1925-1936, May.
    13. Sarah Febres-Cordero & Daniel Jackson Smith, 2022. "Stayin’ Alive in Little 5: Application of Sentiment Analysis to Investigate Emotions of Service Industry Workers Responding to Drug Overdoses," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 19(20), pages 1-12, October.
    14. Galina Daraganova & Philippa Pattison, 2014. "Analysing human social networks," Chapters, in: Robert Stimson (ed.), Handbook of Research Methods and Applications in Spatially Integrated Social Science, chapter 21, pages 459-488, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    15. Hipp, Lena & Kohler, Ulrich & Leumann, Sandra, 2019. "How to Implement Respondent-Driven Sampling in Practice: Insights from Surveying 24-Hour Migrant Home Care Workers," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, pages 1-13.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:evarev:v:31:y:2007:i:2:p:166-199. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.