Since 2007, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development has released an annual report on the extent of homelessness in the United States—the Annual Homeless Assessment Report (AHAR). The report documents how many people are experiencing sheltered homelessness and how many people are experiencing homelessness in unsheltered locations often referred to as “the street.” The AHAR is submitted each year to the U.S. Congress, and its contents are used to inform federal, state, and local policies to prevent and end homelessness.

This report is the second part of a two-part series. The first part is called The 2015 Annual Homeless Assessment Report (AHAR) to Congress, Part 1: Point-in-Time Estimates of Homelessness, and was published in November 2015. The Part 1 report provides estimates of homelessness based on the Point-in-Time (PIT) count data gathered by communities throughout the country in late January. The estimates are provided at the national-, state-, and CoC-levels.

Part 2 of the 2015 AHAR builds on the Part 1 report by adding 1-year estimates of sheltered homelessness based on data from Homeless Management Information Systems (HMIS). The HMIS estimates provide detailed demographic information about people who use the nation’s emergency shelters and transitional housing projects during a 12-month period.