The community of professionals working to end homelessness regularly rely on two types of numbers to judge progress in reaching our goal. “Counts” and “rates” figure significantly into both the Alliance’s recently released State of Homelessness 2019 and HUD’s Annual Homeless Assessment Report.  These data categories are clues to the state of homelessness at the federal, state, and local levels.

What exactly are they telling us?

Counts

A count is exactly what it sounds like: the total number of people in a region or category.

During the last week of January, communities across the country participate in HUD’s Point-in-Time count.  Electronic records are used to generate a total number of people living in emergency shelters, transitional housing, and safe havens.

Comparing the 2018 count to the previous year, the count from 5 years ago, or the the count from 2007 (the first year of the Point-in-Time Count) provides an indicator of progress. For example, in 2007 the count identified 647,258 people experiencing homelessness and in 2018 there were 552,830. This change in the overall counts points to progress being made in ending homelessness.

Beyond measuring progress over time, counts help to identify the regions experiencing the greatest challenges in ending homelessness.

Rates

Rates are another useful means of evaluating the state of homelessness. With this methodology, a homeless count is considered in relation to overall population. This simple calculation reveals the percentage (or share) of people experiencing homelessness in the nation, a state, or CoC.

In 2018, 17 people were experiencing homelessness out of every 10,000 people in the United States. This is the national rate of homelessness. How did we arrive at this number?

In 2018, the nation-wide homeless count was 552,830. And, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, the total population of the United States was 325,719,178. When the first number is divided by the second, the result is 0.001697, or 0.1697 out of every 100 people were experiencing homelessness.

Since those numbers seem abstract, the Alliance and HUD use a scale of 10,000 (instead of 100) and round to the nearest whole number.

Unlike counts, rates account for population shifts over time.  For example, when a state’s homeless numbers increase over a five-year period, is it simply because the state is experiencing a general population explosion?

Read the full article about evaluating homelessness numbers by Joy Moses at National Alliance to End Homelessness.