ABSTRACT
The staggering figure of two to three million homeless Americans has been repeated so often that it has now acquired the status of conventional wisdom. The vast majority of the homeless, moreover, are not otherwise typical Americans who have suffered massive economic catastrophe. Ironically, the greater visibility of the homeless stems in part from these attempts to help. The federal government has several programs to aid the homeless. During congressional hearings in 1980, Mitch Snyder of the Community for Creative Non-Violence, a homeless advocacy group, charged that official data on the homeless were woefully inadequate. The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) in 1983 decided to compile official data on homelessness. The press emphasized that the HUD results were disputed by homeless advocacy groups, and HUD was accused of "playing games." The criticism of HUD's methodology simply does not bear scrutiny.
