This article discusses improvements made to the methodology of the Housing and Urban Development (HUD) point-in-time (PIT) homeless census. HUD’s PIT results are presented to Congress as official data for policy consideration. Yet, PIT methodology focuses on visible street homeless individuals and those in shelters while neglecting the “marginally housed” or less visible homeless who live in automobiles or temporarily stay with friends and extended family. Being a hidden population, the marginally housed has been a traditionally difficult population to study. We replicated HUD’s PIT count but additionally targeted the marginally housed to improve traditional methods of counting the homeless. We improve the PIT count in two ways: (1) by extensively training counters, and (2) by using the personal networks of hundreds of counters to seek out the marginally housed. Student researchers from a local university located 333 more homeless individuals than the local PIT, of which 153 were marginally housed. We do not claim this to be an exhaustive count of all the marginally housed in the region, but it is an initial step in developing methodologies to include this hidden population when calculating the total homeless population. This approach can also improve traditional homeless counts in other cities.
AndersonNels. 1923. The Hobo: The Sociology of the Homeless Man. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press.
2.
BachrachLeona L.1984. “Interpreting Research on the Homeless Mentally Ill: Some Caveats.” Hospital and Community Psychiatry35(9):914–15.
3.
BogardCynthia J.2001. “Claimsmakers and contexts in early constructions of homelessness: A comparison of New York City and Washington, D.C.” Symbolic Interaction24(4): 425–454.
4.
CastañedaErnestoKlassenJonathanSmithCurtis. 2014. “Hispanic and non-Hispanic homeless populations in El Paso, Texas” Hispanic Journal of Behavioral Sciences36(4): 488–505.
5.
ComarScott. 2011. Border Junkies: Addiction and Survival on the Streets of Juárez and El Paso. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press.
6.
DesmondMatthew.2016. Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City. USA: Crown Publishers.
7.
DuneierMitchell. 1999. Sidewalk. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
8.
DunneGillian A.PrendergastShirleyTelfordDavid. 2002. “Young, Gay, Homeless and Invisible: A Growing Population?.” Culture, Health & Sexuality4(1):103–16.
9.
EdinKathrynShaeferLuke H.2016. $2.00 A Day: Living on Almost Nothing in America. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
10.
EhrenreichBarbara.2010. Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America. Henry Holt and Company.
11.
FischerPamela J.ShapiroSamBreakeyWilliam R.AnthonyJames C.KramerMorton. 1986. “Mental Health and Social Characteristics of the Homeless: A Survey of Mission Users.” American Journal of Public Health76(5):519–24.
12.
FolsomDavid P.HawthorneWilliamLindamerLaurieGilmerToddBaileyAnneGolshanShahrokhGarciaPiedadUnützerJürgenHoughRichardJesteDilip V.2005. “Prevalence and Risk Factors for Homelessness and Utilization of Mental Health Services among 10,340 Patients with Serious Mental Illness in a Large Public Mental Health System.” American Journal of Psychiatry162(2):370–76.
13.
GowanTheresa.2010. Hobos, Hustlers, and Backsliders: Homeless in San Francisco. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.
14.
HatchettBonnie F.2004. “Homelessness among Older Adults in a Texas Border Town.” Journal of Aging & Social Policy16(3):35–56.
15.
HeckathornDouglas D.CameronChristopher J.2017. “Network Sampling: From Snowball and Multiplicity to Respondent-Driven Sampling.” Annual Review of Sociology43:1101–19.
16.
HenryMeghanShivjiAzimSousaTanya deCohenRebecca, and Abt Associates Inc. 2015. The 2015 Annual Homeless Assessment Report (AHAR) to Congress. Washington, DC: The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development Office of Community Planning and Development.
17.
HewittChristopher. 1996. “Estimating the Number of Homeless: Media Misrepresentation of an Urban Problen.” Journal of Urban Affairs18(4):431–47.
18.
HopperKimJostJohnHayTerriWelberSusan. 1997. “Homelessness, Severe Mental Illness, and the Institutional Circuit.” Psychiatric Services48(5):659–65.
19.
HopperKimShinnMarybethLaskaEugeneMeisnerMorrisWanderlingJoseph. 2008. “Estimating Numbers of Unsheltered Homeless People through Plant-Capture and Postcount Survey Methods.” American Journal of Public Health98(8):1438–42.
20.
HorowitzCarl. 1989. “Mitch Snyder’s Phony Numbers: The Fiction of Three Million Homeless.” Policy Review49:66–69.
HueyLauraFthenosGeorgiosHryniewiczDanielle. 2012. “I Need Help and I Know I Need Help. Why Won’t Nobody Listen to Me?” Trauma and Homelessness Women’s Experiences with Accessing and Consuming Mental Health Services.” Society and Mental Health2(2):120–34.
24.
JacksonAlphonso.2007. “The Annual Homeless Assessment Report to Congress.” U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development Office of Community Planning and Development, Washington, DC.
25.
JenksChristopher. 1995. The Homeless. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
26.
KoegelPaul M.BurnamAudreyMortonSally C.1996. “Enumerating Homeless People Alternative Strategies and Their Consequences.” Evaluation Review20(4):378–403.
27.
LeeBarrett A.TylerKimberly A.WrightJames D.2010. “The New Homelessness Revisited.” Annual Review of Sociology36:501–21.
28.
LiebowElliot. 1993. Tell Them Who I Am. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster.
29.
LinJessica S.PetryLauraHyattShaheraAuerswaldColette. 2017. “We Count, California! A Statewide Capacity-Building Effort to Improve Youth Inclusion in California’s Point-in-Time Homeless Counts.” World Medical & Health Policy9(3):285–306.
30.
National Alliance to End Homelessness. 2009. Homeless assistance reauthorization: Highlights of the HEARTH Act.
31.
NeumanWilliam Lawrence. 2011. Social Research Methods. Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon.
32.
NewmanKatherine S.2009. No Shame in My Game: The Working Poor in the Inner City. New York: Vintage.
33.
PierangeliLori T.LenhartClare M.2018. “Service-Learning: Promoting Empathy through the Point-in-Time Count of Homeless Populations.” Journal of Nursing Education57(7):436–39.
34.
Point in Time. 2013. “The Face of Homelessness in El Paso: A Report on the 2013 Point in Time Survey.” El Paso Coalition for the Homeless, El Paso, TX.
35.
RossiPeterWrightJ.1987. “The Determinants of Homelessness.” Health Affairs6(1):19–32.
36.
RossiPeter H.1991. Down and Out in America: The Origins of Homelessness. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
37.
SalganikMatthew J.HeckathornDouglas D.2004. “Sampling and Estimation in Hidden Populations Using Respondent-Driven Sampling.” Sociological Methodology, 34(1):193–240.
38.
SalkowKatjaFichterManfred. 2003. “Homelessness and Mental Illness.” Current Opinion in Psychiatry16(4):467–71.
39.
ShieldsTodd G.2001. “Network News Construction of Homelessness: 1980–1993.” The Communication Review4(2):193–218.
40.
ShlayAnne B.RossiPeter H.1992. “Social Science Research and Contemporary Studies of Homelessness.” Annual Review of Sociology18(1):129–60.
41.
SnowDavid A.AndersonLeon. 1993. Down on Their Luck: A Study of Homeless Street People. Oakland, CA: University of California Press.
42.
SnowDavid A.AndersonLeonKoegelPaul. 2002. “Distorting Tendencies in Research on the Homeless.” American Behavioral Scientist37(4):461–75.
43.
SnowDavid A.Leon Anderson, Theron Quist, and Daniel Cress. 1996. “Material Survival Strategies on the Street: Homeless People as Bricoleurs.” Homelessness in America86–96.
44.
SnowDavid A.BakerSusan G.AndersonLeon. 1988. “On the Precariousness of Measuring Insanity in Insane Contexts.” Social Problems35:192–96.
45.
SnowDavid A.BakerSusan G.AndersonLeonMartinMichaei. 1986. “The Myth of Pervasive Mental Illness among the Homeless.” Social Problems33:407–23.
46.
StoeckerRandy. 2013. Research Methods for Community Change: A Project-based Approach. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
47.
StuartForrest. 2011. “Race, Space, and the Regulation of Surplus Labor: Policing African Americans in Los Angeles’s Skid Row.” Souls13(2):197–212.
48.
StuartForrest.2016. Down, out, and under Arrest: Policing and Everyday Life in Skid Row. Chicago, Il: University of Chicago Press.
49.
SusserEzraConoverSarahStrueningElmer L.1990. “Mental Illness in the Homeless: Problems of Epidemiologic Method in Surveys of the 1980s.” Community Mental Health Journal26(5):391–414.
WassermanJason A.ClairJeffrey M.2010. At Home on the Street: People Poverty & a Hidden Culture of Homelessness. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers.
54.
WilliamsJean C.2011. “Stand Up and Be Counted”: The Politics of a Homeless Enumeration.” Poverty & Public Policy3(3):1–27.
55.
WillseCraig. 2015. The Value of Homelessness: Managing Surplus Life in the United States. Minneapolis, MN: The University of Minnesota Press.
56.
WrightJames D.DevineJoel A.1995. “Housing Dynamics of the Homeless: Implications for a Count.” American Journal of Orthopsychiatry65(3):320.
Supplementary Material
Please find the following supplemental material available below.
For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.
For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.
