Many communities have long understood the need to count, describe, and understand the homeless people who do not use shelters and are typically found on the streets, in abandoned buildings, or in other places not meant for human habitation. Unsheltered homeless people are an important subpopulation of homeless persons and their characteristics and needs must be accommodated within any strategy to reduce homelessness. Collecting good baseline data about this subpopulation is essential to understanding the causes of homelessness and to designing effective responses, and can be used as a basis for comparison in future years. Moreover, continued data collection at regular intervals is needed to track progress toward reducing homelessness.

This guide describes several methods for identifying, counting, and learning something about homeless people who are unlikely to be found in shelters or in other residential programs within a local homeless assistance network. Information about these approaches was gathered from communities throughout the country; examples of their methods are provided throughout the guide. The Department of Housing and Urban Development released the first edition of this guide in October 2004 and the second edition in September 2006. This updated version clarifies HUD standards for counting homeless persons moving forward.