The goal of the shelter and institution enumeration is to produce an accurate count of the number of persons who are homeless that are being temporarily housed in shelters and other institutions across the Los Angeles CoC. The approach is to identify and contact as many agencies as possible that temporarily house homeless people and request that those agencies send LAHSA a count of the number of homeless persons housed in their programs on the appropriate nights of the count. In order to identify agencies that provide temporary shelter for homeless people, LAHSA updated its Inventory of Homeless Beds and Services prior to the Homeless Count. The Inventory also provides data about the number of beds and overall services currently available for homeless individuals through the County. Currently, there are approximately over 600 programs in the Inventory database.

The Shelter and Institution (S&I) Count occurs on the same nights as the Street Count. Homeless Count Appointees are trained two weeks before the S&I Count occurs. The appointee are asked to count how many homeless men, women, youth, and families are housed in their facilities during their respective night. They are asked to count at 10:00 p.m. because at that time, everyone is settled in and duplications can be avoided. The S&I Count includes close to 500 emergency shelters, transitional housing facilities, hospital emergency rooms, motels that accept vouchers, detention centers, and alcohol and drug treatment facilities.