Single Room Housing Won\u27t End Homelessness

SROs might be the solution for some people, including the older and disabled homeless, but many others, including the masses of near-homeless (and soon-to-be-homeless) await a more imaginative solution that gives them a chance at stable household formation, adequately compensated labor, social protection from disability and unemployment, and that supports more diverse and mixed household arrangements than is represented in the proposed SRO solution

The Cost of Homelessness: A Perspective from the United States

This paper discusses how researchers and others have analyzed the services histories of persons who have experienced homelessness, as well as their imputed costs. This research has been used both to make visible the ways in which the clients of mainstream social welfare systems (health, corrections, income maintenance and child welfare) become homeless and, complementarily, the impact of people who experience homelessness on the use of these service systems. Most published work in this area has been based on the integration of administrative databases to identify cases and service utilization patterns; some have used retrospective interviews. Results have been used to encourage agency administrators and policymakers to make investments in programs that reduce homelessness and/or the duration of homelessness periods. Quite recently, many local homeless services planning organizations in the US have used this approach to demonstrate the high costs of chronic homelessness and the potential cost offsets associated with the placement of people in supported housing. The opportunities and limitations associated with these various approaches, including their potential applicability to other countries and service sectors are discussed

Federal Plan to Address Homelessness Recognizes Size, Complexity of Problem

The Clinton administration\u27s homelessness plan represents a departure from past federal efforts in recognizing the scope, complexity, and structural causes of homelessness. Most importantly, it provides a much improved conceptual framework for the design of future efforts to reduce homelessness, particularly the recognition that mainstream programs and policies must be enlisted in this fight to avoid expanding the emergency housing system with an unnecessary health and welfare bureaucracy of its own

Summary: Advancing Evidence Based Social Policies through Intergovernmental Data Sharing Partnerships

In response to the challenge of addressing complex social problems with limited resources, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and Congress have called for evidence-based initiatives to facilitate program evaluation and policy research. In 2016, Congress established the Commission on Evidence Based Policy Making to make recommendations on how to accomplish this. While Congress considers mechanisms to link data from federal agencies on a national level, there is much that the federal government can learn from the use of integrated data systems (IDS) at the state and local levels.https://repository.upenn.edu/pennwhartonppi_bschool/1007/thumbnail.jp

The Quandaries of Shelter Reform: An Appraisal of Efforts to Manage Homelessness

In this article, I describe efforts to manage the capacity of homeless shelter programs in Philadelphia and assess the impact of those efforts on providers and consumers of homeless services. Most reforms have focused on reducing the capacity of the shelter system by reducing the average length of stay of persons in shelter and by providing housing relocation assistance. However, these reforms have been compromised by an inability to contol the demand for shelter, particularly the rate of new admissions , and by the extent of need for housing assistance among homeless and near-homeless people in Philadelphia. Alternative methods of financing shelters are described, as are attempts to create a system of specialty shelter providers. The contradictions of shelter reform and the need for a more comprehensive homelessness prevention strategy are discussed

New Strategies and Collaborations Target Homelessness

Homelessness is back in the news, and is receiving increased attention from policy makers. Some communities have experienced a surge in homelessness, attributed to the slowing of the nation\u27s economy alongside continued strength in metropolitan housing markets. New York City, faced with a record number of families in its shelter system this summer, drew the wrath of advocates when it opened a homeless intake center in a former city jail. In San Francisco, the issue became a major focus of debate during the recent mayoral election, as widespread street homelessness has persisted despite a decade of investments in the local homeless service system. Yet contrary to the pessimism that these examples may invite, many local communities have recently joined national advocacy organizations, as well as the Bush administration, in embracing the ambitious goal of ending homelessness in ten years. In some cases they have been joined by foundations and local business coalitions in pressing for more, and more strategically deployed, public and private resources to combat the problem

Shelters Lead Nowhere

The city should take state and Federal financing that goes to the shelters and use it to keep people out of them

On Becoming Homeless: The Structural and Experiential Dynamics of Residential Instability

This study explores the dynamic combination of structural factors domestic conditions, individual and social characteristics, and personal choices that produced episodes of homelessness among a representative sample of young adults (aged 20 to 45) in the city of Philadelphia in the late 1980s. Forty-three single adult homeless people (31 men and 12 women) were selected from a variety of shelter and nonshelter locations and interviewed in-depth about their experiences of becoming homeless. Statistics describing the residential transitions of the survey participants and a weighted distribution of the casual factors of their homelessness revealed the major significance of family relations, work and income, drugs (abuse, dealing, and environment), disabilities and previous institutional experiences. On the basis of written transcripts, combinations of these contributing factors have been identified. Interview selections are provided to illustrate these combinations, or the dynamic pathways to homelessness and the active decision-making processes of the participants. The study findings are interpreted as showing that, considered independently, neither reductionist models of homelessness that emphasize the causal influence of deviant behavior (primarily mental illness and substance abuse), nor the deterministic models of homelessness that examine structural factors independent of their biographical mediation (such as the housing and income crises), are sufficient for understanding the complex relationships that produce episodes of homelessness. While historical, social and economic factors determine the extent and demographic distribution of residential instability in the population, the mediation of those factors in the domestic conditions, personal experiences and restricted choices of men and women is critical to understanding how people become homeless. This study includes a chapter examining the historical, social and economic contexts of residential instability among young adults in Philadelphia

Poorhouse Revisited

The shelter reveals a charade in American welfare policy, pretending to show concern for the visible poor while demonstrating contempt for the invisible poor -- those struggling to keep a day ahead of homelessness. As we try to help the homeless with shelters, we ignore the policies that continue to put people in them