Project Summary
Since 2017, the Suzanne Dworak-Peck School of Social Work at the University of Southern California (USC) and the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority (LAHSA) has collaborated on the design, implementation, and analysis of the Greater Los Angeles Homeless Count.
The homeless count in mandated by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development in order to understand how investiment in homeless services is impacting the problem of homelessness. The USC team has partners at the University of California, Los Angeles and Lens Co to conduct this project. The count is intended to provide point-in-time estimates of the homeless population in the Los Angeles Continuum of Care (CoC) geographic area, which includes all of Los Angeles County except the cities of Pasadena, Glendale, and Long Beach.
Estimates of the homeless population are constructed from data obtained from a PIT Count of the unsheltered individuals and dwellings, a demographic survey of unsheltered adults, a youth count and survey of unsheltered youth, and administrative data from the Homeless Management Information System (HMIS) covering the sheltered population, augmented by reporting from shelters not represented in HMIS.