Do we have the knowledge to address homelessness?

Various forms of housing exclusion are a reality for millions of people across the globe. For people who are homeless in advanced industrialized economies, housing exclusion often co-exists with social service engagement. This essay reviews three books about how homelessness is conceptualized and caused, and how we, as social service providers and social scientists, respond to homelessness: Housing First: Ending Homelessness, Transforming Systems, and Changing Lives, by Deborah Padgett, Benjamin Henwood, and Sam Tsemberis; Women Rough Sleepers in Europe: Homelessness and Victims of Domestic Abuse, by Kate Moss and Paramjit Singh; and The Value of Homelessness: Managing Surplus Life in the United States, by Craig Willse. It concludes that Housing First achieves justice for deeply marginalized individuals but that the effectiveness of Housing First represents a disturbing reminder of our failed welfare states and public institutions

Policy shift or program drift? Implementing housing first in Australia

This Essay critically analysed how the Housing First approach can be successfully applied to the system of supported housing in Australia

Exiting unsheltered homelessness and sustaining housing: a human agency perspective

An emerging body of evidence has demonstrated the extent to which social programs and housing initiatives have successfully helped people exit chronic and unsheltered homelessness. Contemporary research shows that people with both health and social problems are able to exit homelessness and sustain housing over several years. Although the existing evidence is robust and often based on studies employing rigorous experimental designs, clients of programs are presented as passive service recipients whose exits from homelessness are attributed to outside intervention. Drawing on a multisite Australian study with people who had exited chronic and unsheltered homelessness, this article adopts a theoretical framework of human agency to demonstrate how people exiting homelessness play active roles in shaping the outcomes they achieve. Extending the existing evidence base, we show how they explain their outcomes in terms of imagined future trajectories and an evaluation of their options to achieve change

Support requirements and accommodation options for people in the ACT with high and complex service needs

This report has been prepared for the Australian Capital Territory (ACT) Government and presents analyses and findings from the study titled ‘Support requirements and accommodation options for people in the ACT with high and complex needs’ (the Cohort Study).\ua0The intention of the study is to develop a current picture of the homeless and at-risk population in the ACT,\ua0identify a range of models and options for responding to the needs of that population (and assess existing responses), and contribute to the development of methodologies and a suite of tools to create a real-time evidence base to underpin tailored responses to the needs of people on the ground