Connecting HUD Continuum of Care Point-in-Time Homeless Counts to US Census Geographies: 2005-2016

• In Event: 2149 - Big Data and New Methods in Sociological Research

Abstract

The Housing and Urban Development has initiated a required point-in-time count of the homeless across the United States in an administrative unit known as Continuum of Care (CoC). This unit unfortunately does not line up with more commonly used administrative and functional units used by the US Census Bureau and other major survey firms. To rectify this issue we have employed modern methods of spatial disaggregation, matching and imputation to generate county data. Further, we employ a spatiotemporal model to explore the spatial and temporal change of homeless in the US from 2007-2016. We further employ this model to back cast CoC and county level estimates for 2005 and 2006 which currently only have publicly available spatial data, but not count data. We finish with a brief discussion and overview of how our method works, and potential uses for the data in social science and policy research.

Authors

• Zack W. Almquist, University of Minnesota

• Nathaniel Helwig, University of Minnesota

• Yun You, University of Minnesota