Neil Donovan is part of Change.org's Changemakers network, comprised of leading voices for social change. Neil is the Executive Director of the National Coalition for the Homeless.
It is unknown nearly how many homeless people live in the United States. America's inability to define the size and nature of its homeless population is at the very least negligent, with far-reaching social, political, legal and financial implications. Governmental and community approaches to prevent, manage or end homelessness are all compromised by an inability to follow the basic principle that size, density and distribution are all essential variables to predict and ensure an effective solution to one of America's most significant and persistent social ills.
The United States Constitution describes a time-tested but imperfect enumeration process, a census of all free people, to apportion congressional representation and taxation by state. The Constitution directs the government to count those residing in America within three years of the first meeting of Congress and then within every subsequent period of ten years. The law applies to every resident, unless you're homeless, and then recent court decisions have determined that those who are un-housed are collectively innumerable — uncountable — Down for the Count.
The solution to the innumerability of those un-housed and the most appropriate method of determining the incidence and prevalence of homeless in the United States is statistical sampling. Currently there exist reliable indicators to generate local, regional and national estimates of homelessness, including eviction rates, move-out rates, public housing waiting list counts, losses in affordable housing units, foreclosure incidents, homeless children and youth numbers in school districts, and additional contacts with specialized services providers. Collectively, these indicators constitute a valid body of information from which to draw a reasonable approximation of those who are experiencing homelessness.
The U.S. Court of Appeals decided in 1996 (case link) " ... that failure to count all the homeless was not a failure to perform a constitutional duty; the Constitution does not give individuals a right to be counted or a right to a perfectly accurate census." The U.S. Census Bureau, charged with the constitutional responsibility of conducting the national census, argued in this case that statistical sampling, as a method of counting un-housed residents for apportionment, would violate the Census Act of 1976. Armed with the federal court's decision and guidance, the Bureau has since conducted legally sanctioned undercounts of American residents.
The impact of the court's ruling was immediate and measurable. In preparation for the upcoming 2000 census, President Clinton estimated that the U.S. homelessness population was exceeding 700,000. At the time that the 2000 census was being conducted, there was general consensus among academics, advocates and homeless service providers that the number of homeless in America exceeded 750,000. The 2000 U.S. Census, however, reported 170,706 Americans as "people without conventional housing" or homeless, an undercount of more than one-half million people.
It isn't only in the counting of homeless people that the Bureau's compliance with the Census Act of 1976 has been notoriously selective. During the same year that the Bureau decided that the use of statistical sampling for un-housed residents was a violation, the Bureau also decided that when information from a particular address was incomplete or compromised, a sampling technique called "hot-deck imputation" could be used, which infers that the "incomplete address" has the same population characteristics as those of its geographically closest neighbors of the same type. In this case, the Bureau's selective use of statistical sampling caused an undercount that resulted in the loss of a congressional seat for the state of Utah (case link).
As America prepared for the new millennium, homelessness, in parts of the country, was reaching epidemic levels and earning the reputation of being "unsolvable." Congress was becoming frustrated by its increasing investment, with no measurable return. They wanted answers to three basic questions: how many homeless people live in the United States? Since the most recent infusion of federal support, beginning in 1987 (McKinney Act), has the number of homeless people in America changed? Is America solving its homeless problem?
Congress first sought answers to their questions from the U.S. Census Bureau, but was informed that the census didn't conduct a census of homeless residents. Congress shifted its inquiry to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), the federal agency that holds the largest appropriation and portfolio of programs to "help the homeless." At the time, HUD's knowledge of America's homeless population was limited to information gleaned from annual progress reports, gathered from a sampling of grantees across the country.
Without the funding, skills or tools necessary to conduct a national enumeration of America's homeless, HUD sought to answer Congress's questions by relying on local communities, who receive HUD's Homeless Assistance Funding, to conduct annual homeless counts. Although an arguably noble response to Congress's inquiry, HUD's response created a prolific source of troubles: gross statistical omissions, interagency definitional inconsistencies, methodological disparities and inconsistent reporting.
Homeless school children are a well-documented example of an omission from HUD's annual enumeration. School systems nationwide are required to report the number of students experiencing homelessness. During the 2008-09 school year, approximately 930,000 children were homeless. HUD's "troubles" would discount 670,000 homeless children or 72 percent of students living in hotels or "doubled up" — Down for the Count.
People experiencing homelessness, the American people and Congress deserve to know the answer to the three basic, answerable but challenging questions asked by Congress. Federal agencies, charged with serving those experiencing homeless, must answer only to the extent possible through their limited lenses, abilities and responsibilities. And the U.S. Census Bureau must take sober reflection on its constitutional duty.
The Bureau's ability to be legally relieved of a set of responsibilities, counting the un-housed, does not dismiss it from the moral responsibility to serve all to the best of its ability. The inability to show injury, from being uncounted, and cause, to the Bureau, doesn't relieve the Bureau of its guilt and responsibility to make those harmed whole once again.
Photo credit: USDAgov
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