Applied Survey Research (ASR) is a federal requirement under Department of Housing and Urban Development. Counties must count their homeless population every two years in order to receive federal funding. ASR uses several methods to count the homeless population including: street count, shelter and institution count, telephone survey, and homeless survey. I reviewed the data from the LA Continuum of Care in 2007. The count for LA Continuum of Care consisted of 68,608 total people, with the median age of 45 years. The survey counted 22,376 chronic homeless people. Chronic homelessness in this survey is defined as, “an unaccompanied individual with a disabling condition who has been continually homeless for one year or more, or has experienced four or more episodes of homelessness within the past 3 years.” Gender and race are significant in regards to chronic homelessness with approximately 70% male and 29% females, African Americans making up approximately 48%. The survey also indicated the services and assistance used by the chronically homeless. 42% use free meals, 32% are not using any services, 24% use emergency shelter, 22% use health services, and 15% use mental health services. The survey found the top two reasons for being homeless to be economic issues including lost job or eviction. A statistic that stood out to me was failure to access housing services due to the lack of available beds. The survey found that 35% tried to access LA county shelter or a transitional housing program or both within 30 days prior to taking the survey; of those 45% had been turned away, the main reason due to lack of beds.  Data is available, yet the availability of data does not guarantee that the problem gets solved or that it draws public attention. Perhaps a problem is due to the media, which does not provide systematic evidence. I also looked at the homeless count from where I am from, Orange County. In 2009 the count was 8,333 homeless people. The number of sheltered people consisted of 31%, unsheltered 69%. This data is startling. In the book The Homeless by Christopher Jencks there is a statement, “the spread of homelessness disturbed affluent Americans for both personal and political reasons.” I see this statement to be true. For example, it can be understood that lack of shelters is a problem, a solution, create more shelters. Yet, nobody wants the homeless shelter in their neighborhood. Jencks poses the question, what is our moral obligation to strangers? What is wrong with the economic and social institutions? http://www.appliedsurveyresearch.org/projects_database/homelessness/