Counting the homeless in Los Angeles County

Abstract

Over the past two decades, a variety of methods have been used to count the homeless in large metropolitan areas. In this paper, we report on an effort to count the homeless in Los Angeles County, one that employed the sampling of census tracts. A number of complications are discussed, including the need to impute homeless counts to areas of the County not sampled. We conclude that, despite their imperfections, estimated counts provided useful and credible information to the stakeholders involved.