There is little agreement about what constitutes homelessness. The narrow view defines homelessness as 'street homelessness' or 'rooflessness'. The broad view defines all people who are in 'inadequate accommodation' as being homeless. Homelessness can be considered as a continuum of housing situations. Statistics on homelessness are either absent or highly unreliable.
Researchers face practical problems trying to measure homelessness and locate the homeless.
Further, the manner in which homelessness is defined will alter the measurement. Official definitions of homelessness are often very narrow and lead to an underestimation of homelessness. The other important contextual issue for us to consider is whether there is a connection between housing and poverty. Traditionally, housing has been a matter of private responsibility and governments have only provided a limited amount of housing for 'the poor' and provided hidden subsidies for home owners by not taxing capital gains on the 'home' property and by forcing banks to offer low-interest loans for the purchase of a home property. An indicator known as 'housing related poverty' is used to measure the impact housing has on poverty.