Counting the Homeless

Shelter and Street Night (S-Night) was the recent effort by the U.S. Bureau of the Census to include selected components of the nation's homeless population in the 1990 decennial count. Teams of investigators in five cities (New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Phoenix, and New Orleans) were contracted by the Census Bureau's Center for Survey Methods Research to assist in assessing various aspects of the S-Night enumeration. Each team compiled independent shelter lists that were compared against the Bureau's lists and also undertook experiments to assess the reliability of the enumeration effort. This introductory statement reviews the design features, methods, findings, and recommendations that were common to all five studies presented in a special issue focused on counting the homeless.