Who Counts? Revisiting the Quantification of Homelessness in the Era of Homeland Security

• In Event: 106 - Open Refereed Roundtable Session I
  In Refereed Roundtable: A. Table 16. Public Policy

Abstract

The desire to quantify the social phenomenon called homelessness has a history that parallels the emergence of homelessness itself. Debates around the issue of counting flared in the U.S. during the 1980s, when media reports of the supposedly growing homeless population circulated through national news. Homeless advocates at the time were arguing for an estimate as high as 2.2 million, while federal agencies reported official counts as low as 250,000. This extreme discrepancy launched a decade long debate about best methodological practices for counting and describing “the homeless problem.” For the most part, scholarly debate on this issue has been limited to queries of accuracy. This paper argues for the importance of revisiting the debate on quantifying homelessness, not with a concern for accuracy but instead to consider the implications of particular counting strategies. Who counts, both in terms of who does the counting and who is counted, affect various forms of resource allocation and shape perceptions of homelessness and of places. Drawing on field work in Austin, Texas, this paper examines the extent to which regionally specific quantifications of homelessness share similarities with the Homeland Security discourse that normalized the tracking and surveillance of other “suspicious populations.” Importantly, counting methods serve as a reminder that the homeless have long been subject to conditions of almost total surveillance. A consideration of the annual point-in-time counts of the homeless unveils the persistence of optics as the primary mechanism for assessing who does or does not belong in a given space.

Author

• Maggie Tate, University of Texas-Austin