It's been an accepted fact in recent years that Orange County's homeless population is one of the largest in America, trailing only Los Angeles and New York.
Officially, the number of people without a roof over their heads was pegged at 34,898 countywide.
But on a rainy night in January 2005, when the federal government asked cities and counties across the nation to count bodies in shelters, parks and on the street, Orange County researchers came back with a startling tally: 2,848. The county's 3,300 shelter beds weren't even full.
Homeless advocates were dismayed. "They don't want people to think there are only 2,800 homeless here. Everyone knows that number is not true," said Greg Robinson, director of Cal State Fullerton's Social Science Research Center, which helped coordinate the survey.
Other estimates for Orange County's homeless population, based on scholarly research, range from 5,800 to 11,600.
Finding the true number is a logistical and political minefield, partly because counting the homeless is an inexact science, and partly because of disputes over how to even define homelessness. But on this most people can agree: The number of people living on the streets each night in Orange County is far below the 35,000 still cited by county officials.
Counting the homeless is hardly a new problem. The conflict erupted in the 1980s, when homeless activists claimed 3 million Americans had no shelter, but researchers said 600,000 tops.
"People disagree about this, and they disagree a lot," said Joel Best, a University of Delaware sociology professor whose book "Damned Lies and Statistics" recounts early feuds over homelessness tallies.
Numbers stir emotions, Best said, because they're used to symbolize "how big a problem is and what sort of moral standing it should have." That, in turn, influences public perceptions, government policies and private donations to charities.
In 1990, the U.S. Census Bureau took so much heat for trying to quantify homelessness that it now refuses to release data on the number of "people without conventional housing."
That's fine by Michael Stoops of the National Coalition for the Homeless. "We spend too much time, energy and money trying to count the homeless" instead of actually dealing with the problem, he said. "It doesn't matter whether there's 600,000 or 3 million because we're not even helping the 600,000."
