How Peer Support Specialists Uniquely Initiate and Build Connection with Young People Experiencing Homelessness

Young people experiencing homelessness are often apprehensive to engage in conventional service systems due to prior mistreatment by providers and others in their lives, as well as stigma associated with accessing services. Even when relationships between service providers and young people are initiated, they often end prematurely. Mutual aid, or peer-to-peer support, has a long and promising history within the mental health field, yet has received little empirical attention in work with young people experiencing homelessness. The present study used participatory qualitative methods to understand how peers uniquely initiate and build connection with young people experiencing homelessness. Through interviews and journaling with peer support specialists and program staff, this study found that peers initiate relationships with young people by becoming familiar faces in youth spaces, identifying themselves as peers, then formalizing relationships with young people. Peers build connection by showing they are on the “same side of the glass” as young people, establishing autonomy and availability over a preset agenda, and creating containers acceptable for failure. Peers, their supervisors, and organizations building mutual aid programs may consider these findings when working to build programs which flexibly and authentically engage young people experiencing homelessness in meaningful relationships

Sense of Community and (Third) Place Among Young Adults in Permanent Supportive Housing: A Mixed-Methods Inquiry

Unhoused young people have often endured co-occurring experiences of marginalization, including long-term abuse and neglect from systems which have failed to support them. Permanent Supportive Housing (PSH) is a formal intervention which seeks to offer stability and support to young people. This three-manuscript dissertation uses community-engaged mixed methods to understand sense of community, sense of place, and third places among young adults in PSH in Grand Junction, Colorado. The first manuscript used longitudinal mixed methods to understand how PSH residents’ (N = 27) sense of community shifts over 1.5 years of living in PSH. We found that residents’ sense of community was shaped by an ongoing negotiation of personal and collective needs. Building community takes time and requires opportunities for voices to be heard, along with ongoing personal and relational growth. The second manuscript used geographic interviews, a qualitative geographic information systems (QGIS) methodology, to understand residents’ (N = 15) sense of place within PSH. We found that the common areas (third places) within the PSH setting were contested spaces: a mix of connection and compromised safety, corners of comfort amidst milieus of noise and conflict. As such, residents desired choice-centered spaces, where there are choices of what to do, who to spend time with, and how to spend time. The third manuscript used game-based inquiry to understand how recently housed young adults (N = 23) would reimagine third place settings. Participants suggested third places must offer opportunities for agency and individualization; they must meet everyday needs; and they must be explicitly inclusive. To actualize these tenets, participants imagined places that meet many needs and do many things; portable and adaptable physical spaces; freedom to choose how to play; attending to and subverting oppressive social hierarchies; providing choice for privacy or connection; knowing people will be around; and free amenities. These findings have implications for PSH settings, and other settings which aim to support young people. Further, this work contributes to theoretical and methodological development at the nexus of creativity, choice, and care for young adults who have endured ongoing failure from the systems meant to support them