Homelessness experience of person

Status: This standard was approved as a departmental standard on February 10, 2026.

Definition

Homelessness experience refers to whether a person has experienced homelessness at any point during a specified reference period. A person is considered to be experiencing homelessness if they are without stable, safe or permanent housing and do not have the immediate prospect, means or ability to acquire it.

Homelessness may be differentiated based on location or other factors.

Unsheltered homelessness includes people experiencing homelessness who are living in the streets or in places not intended for human habitation.

Sheltered homelessness includes people experiencing homelessness in emergency shelters. This includes shelters for people experiencing homelessness, shelters for specific population groups or situations, and domestic violence shelters.

Hidden homelessness includes people experiencing homelessness who are staying temporarily in dwellings other than shelters, such as the dwellings of friends or family, without guaranteed residency and having nowhere else to live.

Person refers to an individual and is the unit of analysis for most social statistics programs.

Usage

Homelessness experience can be measured over various reference periods. Common reference periods are one day, 12 months and lifetime.

A one-day reference period, or point-in-time count, is used to estimate the number of people experiencing homelessness on a given day or night.

A 12-month reference period can help capture short and temporary instances of homelessness, as well as mitigate seasonal effects throughout the year.

A lifetime reference period offers the broadest measure of homelessness and can help measure outcomes of past experiences with homelessness.

The population that experiences homelessness is small, relative to the entire population. Large sample surveys and the census can use a one-day or 12-month reference period. Smaller sample surveys may benefit from using a longer reference period, such as a lifetime measure, to have enough observations for analysis.

Different measurement methods may be used, depending on the type of homelessness being measured and the chosen reference period. A dwelling-based household survey can measure hidden homelessness or past experiences with homelessness but would not measure people currently experiencing unsheltered or sheltered homelessness. Proxy responses may be less appropriate to measure past experiences with homelessness over longer reference periods.

Conformity to relevant internationally recognized standards

This standard is compatible with the recommendations for censuses in the 2017 United Nations (UN) publication Principles and Recommendations for Population and Housing Censuses, Revision 3. The UN recommendations suggest that two categories or degrees of homelessness data can be collected in censuses.

Primary homelessness includes "persons living in streets or without a shelter that would fall within the scope of living quarters."

Secondary homelessness may include "persons with no place of usual residence who move frequently between various types of accommodation (including dwellings, shelters or other living quarters)" or "persons usually resident in long-term (also called 'transitional') shelters or similar arrangements for the homeless."

The UN recommendation acknowledges that the definition of homelessness can vary from country to country, depending on cultural definitions and perceptions of concepts such as "adequate housing," "minimum community housing standard" or "security of tenure."

Classifications

Relation to previous version

  • Homelessness experience of person February 10, 2026 to current

    This is the current standard.

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