The geography of adult homelessness in the US: Validation of state and county estimates.

This study models geographic variations in the US in lifetime occurrence of homelessness, length of homeless experience, and point-in-time estimates based on socioeconomic, demographic, and disability indicators, among 13,931 respondents in the National Comorbidity Replication and the National Latino Asian American surveys. It uses a small area estimation methodology to estimate county and state levels of homelessness. This study demonstrates high validity for the state estimates, but not for counties. Overall, the model generates a point-in-time estimate of adult homeless persons at 377,000, and an adult lifetime rate of 4.7% of the household adult population.