America’s homeless services system relies on a massive amount of data, and at first glance, that data is exacting. Federal reports describe the country’s unhoused population in granular detail, listing precisely how many people are experiencing homelessness in each city along with detailed demographic data. Want to know how many people ages 55-64 slept outside in Spokane last year? A spreadsheet confidently provides the answer: just one.
That data influences decisions at every level of government, from how the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) distributes $3 billion in funding to how local service providers target their outreach efforts. It’s also not that accurate. As a result, communities across the country — including King County — don’t really know exactly how many of their residents are unhoused and have a limited window into people’s circumstances and needs.
So, a team of University of Washington researchers designed a better way to count. Led by Zack Almquist, a UW associate professor of sociology, and Amy Hagopian, professor emeritus of health systems and population health, researchers developed a method that taps into people’s social networks to generate a more representative sample, which they use to estimate the total unhoused population. Along the way, agency staff and volunteers gather information on people’s demographics, resources and needs.
The researchers launched this method in partnership with King County in 2022 and repeated the process in 2024, publishing their findings Sept. 4 in the American Journal of Epidemiology. UW News sat down with Almquist and Hagopian to discuss their new approach and how it could help close the gaps in our understanding of homelessness in America. READ MORE HERE