Homelessness enumeration: moving towards a demographic account

This chapter discusses approaches to enumerating or counting the number of people who experience homelessness. The most common approaches involve point-in-time surveys of people on the streets and administrative counts and by-name lists of people accessing homelessness support services. The diversity of data sources combined with differences in how homelessness is defined create wide differences in current enumeration efforts around the world and little comparability within and across countries. Applying a demographic framework and demographic accounting techniques, this chapter proposes a systematic approach to estimating the number of people entering and exiting homelessness over time. While ambitious, the proposal complements existing community efforts to end homelessness.