Homelessness Policy Research Articles

A Tale of Two Crises: Local Homelessness Policy during Covid-19

A Tale of Two Crises: Local Homelessness Policy during Covid-19

Family-homelessness and child absence from school: How data linkage research has identified and quantified the association in Wales, UK

BackgroundHome and school experiences are linked. Though evidence exists quantifying the association between family-homelessness and school absences, it largely originates from the United States. Understanding the nature of this association in Wales, UK, is important given differing social, economic, and homelessness policy contexts when compared to the United States. ApproachAnalysis included pupils attending state funded schools in a single local authority in Wales, during the academic years 2012/13 to 2015/16. Pupils were flagged as experiencing family-homelessness in an academic year if their family were supported by the housing service operating in the local authority area. Outcomes of interest were number of total, authorised, and unauthorised half-day-sessions absent per academic year. Pupils were observed over multiple academic years (N = 105,355 pupil-years), enabling both cross-sectional and longitudinal (panel) analyses. ResultsOn average, pupils in families accessing the housing service missed a total of 10 half-day-sessions more per academic year than pupils whose families were not accessing the service. Unauthorised half-day-sessions absent were double for pupils in families who had approached the housing service. After controlling for personal and area characteristics, rates of all absences were higher among pupils whose families accessed the service. ConclusionThis study represents the first published linkage of homelessness and education data in the UK. Given the apparent association between absenteeism and accessing housing support, changes to policy, practice, and law should be explored to facilitate co-operation between schools and housing services in Wales, and to protect children and their families from further disadvantage.

Planning for Homelessness: Land Use Policy, Housing Markets, and Cities’ Homelessness Responses

Many American cities are in the midst of a homelessness crisis. Through their control over zoning and land use policy, local governments can reduce homelessness by facilitating housing construction and improving housing affordability. Using administrative data and surveys of local public officials, this paper asks whether (and which) cities connect their homelessness and land use policies. We find that cities rarely link homelessness policies with zoning and land use. Cities in California and the Pacific region are generally more likely to make these connections, suggesting an important state role in guiding local homeless and planning policies. Cities with high and low levels of unsheltered homelessness show little difference in their propensity to connect land use and zoning policies with homelessness.

The Work of Youth Homelessness Prevention in Ontario: Points of Frustration, Points of Potential

Despite a rhetorical turn towards prevention in homelessness policy and research, the work of youth homelessness prevention continues to be frustrated by persistent structural barriers. In this article, we examine how youth homelessness prevention is being implemented in the province of Ontario, with a focus on targeted provincial support programs and local shelter diversion practices. Drawing on interviews with workers in the homeless-serving sector, we describe the implementation of these initiatives and identify points of frustration and potential that workers encounter as they try to prevent experiences of homelessness for youth. We contend that these points of frustration illuminate persistent structural barriers that continue to forestall the work of youth homelessness prevention. Meanwhile, points of potential demonstrate the importance of empowering workers to creatively adapt and offer responsive services. Taken together, these signal the critical importance of two aspects of contemporary homelessness prevention typologies—primordial prevention and empowerment. We end by offering aspirations for action, a political reframing of the policy recommendations sections more typical of social science research articles. We do so to affirm our commitment to advancing the work of structural transformation that is required to achieve the right to housing for all, including youth.

A critical discourse analysis of older women’s representation in housing and homelessness

Purpose Despite a significant evidence base illustrating the issue of housing insecurity and homelessness experienced by women over the age of 55 in Australia [Pawson et al., 2018; Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW), 2021b; Mission Australia 2022; Per Capita 2022], there continues to be a knowledge gap in the representation of older women in current Federal and New South Wales (NSW) State Government housing and homelessness policies and initiatives. This paper aims to identify the extent and ways in which older women were represented (or not represented) in the Federal and NSW State housing and homelessness policies in 2022. Design/methodology/approach Of the total primary and supplementary Federal and NSW State policy and strategy documents, 16 were collected through a systematic review and then analysed using a Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) framework and feminist lens to explore quotes, phrases, keywords and language choices which suggested prevalent themes, rhetorical devices and dominant discourses. Findings Three significant themes were identified by the analysis (1) “relinquished responsibility”, (2) “inconsistent rhetoric” and (3) “homogenising and ideological cherry picking”. These themes presented the authors with three main discussion points to inform policy reform which we have addressed in relation to policy implications, evidence-based policy decision-making and impacts on older women. Originality/value The combination of a systematic review with CDA provides a unique approach to exploring homelessness policy for older women.

Rural and regional homelessness in Queensland mining communities: Implications for rethinking the housing and homelessness policy landscape

Rural homelessness has largely been silenced in homelessness narratives and social policy in Australia and throughout the world. This paper reports on data from a larger qualitative study about homelessness in rural and regional Central Queensland mining communities located within the Bowen Basin region, inland from Australia's eastern seaboard. Semi-structured, qualitative interviews and focus groups were conducted with people who had lived experience of homelessness in the rural mining communities of Mackay (regional), Moranbah and Dysart (rural), and service provider representatives and community advocates. The qualitative analysis revealed that people experience homelessness in rural and regional communities in unique ways that are different to metropolitan constructions of homelessness. This research identified rural and regional poverty, the nature of boom or bust economies, over-stressed human service providers, social isolation and lack of affordable housing as factors contributing to homelessness in rural and regional mining communities. This paper highlights the urgent need for more scholarly research to inform and promote more critical social policy approaches that frame homelessness as a public policy priority in rural and regional mining communities.

Policy-related Homelessness Discourses in Canada: Implications for Nursing Research, Practice, and Advocacy

Despite Canada’s commitment to several international human rights instruments recognizing the right to housing, homelessness remains widespread nationwide. Informed by critical political economy theory and critical discourse studies, we examined relevant literature focusing on homelessness policy-related documents in the Canadian context. The findings demonstrate interrelated homelessness policy discourses: 1) emergency shelters, 2) housing first, 3) social determinants of health, 4) human rights, and 5) political economy approach. We conclude that a critical political economy approach offers the most helpful way of understanding and responding to the homelessness crisis in Canada. Homelessness is a socioeconomic and political problem requiring nurses and health professionals to take sociopolitical actions. As nurses and health justice advocates, we stand in solidarity with labour movements to protect public health. This study can be adopted in local, national, and global settings.

Homeless Services during the COVID-19 Pandemic: Revisiting Salamon’s Voluntary Failure Theory

Abstract This paper examines government and nonprofit relations in the context of federal homeless policy with specific attention to Continuum of Care (CoC) homeless networks during the COVID-19 pandemic. Applying Salamon’s voluntary failure theory, we conduct a qualitative study answering the following question: How, during the COVID-19 pandemic, did government address the voluntary failures of the nonprofit sector? Results expand Salamon’s work by offering a more robust picture of what happens after federal funds are allocated to support the failures of the nonprofit sector. Government funds both help and generate their own limitations, which are further alleviated by nonprofit solutions.

From a Criminal to a Human-Rights Issue: Re-Imagining Policy Solutions to Homelessness.

Criminalizing homelessness is ineffective, costly, and immoral; yet it remains a dominant feature in the management of this global social issue. There has been little analysis investigating why punitive homeless policies have remained popular despite their ineffectiveness. In applying Bacchi's What's the Problem Represented to Be (WPR) framework to a Canadian encampment bylaw, our analysis demonstrated that public policies criminalizing homelessness continue to prevail because homelessness is fundamentally understood as a problem of deviant, criminal individual behavior. We argue that reframing understandings of homelessness from one of criminality to a human rights issue gives way to more dignified, just, and effective solutions, such as the Housing First Model. We suggest that community health nurses can serve a key role in disrupting these criminalizing discourses across domains of policy, research, and practice by advocating for holistic, rights-based, and equity-oriented policy solutions related to homelessness.

‘A tide of homeless, drug-addicted and mentally ill people’: Representing homeless people in MailOnline content

Councils across England are warning of a rise in the number of homeless people as Covid-19 pandemic protections such as the eviction ban are withdrawn (Watts et al., 2022). At the same time, research suggests that more people in England could become homeless by 2024 due to, inter alia, the cost-of-living crisis (The Guardian, 2022). This paper considers how homeless people and homelessness are represented in the biggest UK online news brand, MailOnline. Using corpus-assisted critical discourse analysis, it unveils the consistent dehumanisation, criminalisation and pathologisation of homeless people in articles published in 2021. Through a micro-linguistic analysis, it uncovers the discursive strategies used by journalists to represent homeless people negatively, such as functionalisation, individualisation, the use of statistics, and metaphors of natural disaster. The paper argues that these representations could contribute to a moral panic surrounding homelessness at a time when one might expect greater understanding due to the potential rise in homelessness. More research is needed to understand the ways in which these discourses map onto homelessness policies and are received by members of the British public.

Fair and Efficient Allocation of Scarce Resources Based on Predicted Outcomes: Implications for Homeless Service Delivery

Artificial intelligence, machine learning, and algorithmic techniques in general, provide two crucial abilities with the potential to improve decision-making in the context of allocation of scarce societal resources. They have the ability to flexibly and accurately model treatment response at the individual level, potentially allowing us to better match available resources to individuals. In addition, they have the ability to reason simultaneously about the effects of matching sets of scarce resources to populations of individuals. In this work, we leverage these abilities to study algorithmic allocation of scarce societal resources in the context of homelessness. In communities throughout the United States, there is constant demand for an array of homeless services intended to address different levels of need. Allocations of housing services must match households to appropriate services that continuously fluctuate in availability, while inefficiencies in allocation could “waste” scarce resources as households will remain in-need and re-enter the homeless system, increasing the overall demand for homeless services. This complex allocation problem introduces novel technical and ethical challenges. Using administrative data from a regional homeless system, we formulate the problem of “optimal” allocation of resources given data on households with need for homeless services. The optimization problem aims to allocate available resources such that predicted probabilities of household re-entry are minimized. The key element of this work is its use of a counterfactual prediction approach that predicts household probabilities of re-entry into homeless services if assigned to each service. Through these counterfactual predictions, we find that this approach has the potential to improve the efficiency of the homeless system by reducing re-entry, and, therefore, system-wide demand. However, efficiency comes with trade-offs - a significant fraction of households are assigned to services that increase probability of re-entry. To address this issue as well as the inherent fairness considerations present in any context where there are insufficient resources to meet demand, we discuss the efficiency, equity, and fairness issues that arise in our work and consider potential implications for homeless policies.

Critical junctures as complex processes: examining mechanisms of policy change and path dependence in the Canadian pandemic response to homelessness

AbstractPolicy change is not an instantaneous or linear process. In fact, change includes several mechanisms working in tandem and even against one another. This article examines the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on homelessness policy in Canada. In a sector that is already plagued with emergency responses – rather than long-term solutions – the pandemic has initiated a critical juncture where policy change is possible, but not guaranteed. Although the existing failures to alleviate homelessness in Canada make policy failings even more obvious, aspects of the pre-existing Canadian response to homelessness negate change. The pandemic, however, has led to temporary solutions and created a setting where long-term change is possible. Using over 150 primary sources, this article analyses mechanisms of change and path dependence in the pandemic response to homelessness. The presence of such mechanisms is tested in three major Canadian cities.

Safe storage and parking lots: anti-homeless laws and homeless service spaces in Los Angeles

ABSTRACT A new architecture that provides essential services (like property storage and vehicle parking) to unhoused people now exists in cities like Los Angeles, where thousands of people live on streets and sidewalks. This paper shows how homeless storage spaces are historically linked to mandatory “homeless sweeps” and laws that restrict the amount of personal property an unhoused person can legally keep. Similarly, the paper highlights how officially designated parking lots for people who live in their cars and vans paradoxically attempt to provide secure parking for unhoused people in a city that prohibits vehicle dwelling in other, safer parts of the city. Together, these insights help establish new homeless storage and parking spaces as products of institutional mechanisms that criminalize homelessness. Awareness of this history is critical to developing compassionate homeless policy without punitive undertones and creating built environments that preserve human dignity and reduce the stigma of homelessness.

Warm solidarity in the Belgian homelessness policy assemblage during the coronavirus pandemic

In 2020 in Belgium the coronavirus crisis generated a widespread solidarity between the housed and the homeless. This paper adopts a policy assemblage approach to investigate policy responses to the pandemic with regards to actions, discourses and spatial materialities around homelessness. Three areas of contingent reassembling emerged from the analysis: spaces of cooperation, domestic space and public space. All three were permeated with new charity power relations and warm solidarity rhetoric. Firstly, emergency responses involved a high level of cooperation between different actors. Secondly, domestic space became a space for participation for helpers, while recipients – temporarily and as an exceptional measure – were granted access to it. Thirdly, daily practices in public space revealed and exacerbated power imbalances. Additionally, homelessness was portrayed in the media as caused by these exceptional circumstances rather than a problem of structural inequalities and insufficient policies. In this rhetoric, increased civic solidarity was the answer to the extraordinary situation. Despite all their drawbacks, in the context of the multilevel Belgian administrative structure, however, these contingent initiatives are potentially also a tool of critique and policy change

Can a basic income help address homelessness? A Titmussian perspective

Homelessness is a worsening problem across the developed world and existing policy responses are failing to have an impact. This article considers whether a basic income (BI) can play a role in radically overhauling prevailing homelessness policy and interventions. Drawing on Richard Titmuss’ classical arguments about the value of universalist welfare, I argue that a BI can play a role, but only as part of a suite of universalist measures that includes large-scale social housing investment and rent controls. I highlight how a BI can help address the ‘income side’ of the housing affordability problem driving homelessness, but must be coupled with other measures that address housing cost and supply. I also consider how a BI can reduce stigma arising from targeted homelessness measures. I conclude by arguing that addressing homelessness requires us to transform the logic of welfare provision and that a BI can help do this.

Transforming the Homelessness Policy by Housing First Approach - The case study of Seoul -

The purpose of this study is to explore the necessity of housing first approach, taking the Seoul homelessness policy as an example, and to derive constraints and policy agendas in applying the housing first approach. For this purpose, this study conducted a literature study, an analysis of raw data from the homeless survey, and advisory meetings. The decrease in the number of homeless people in Seoul has slowed in recent years, and avoiding facilities by homeless people was confirmed. In addition, not only economic problems, but complex service needs are intensifying. It is necessary to critically review whether the policy so far is still effective. Therefore, this study suggested the need to adopt the housing first approach as an alternative. However, the long-established institutional factors are hindering progress toward the housing first approach. In conclusion, first, if the housing first approach is to be adopted, the existing facility-centered support system should be converted into a housing-centered support system. Second, the supply of public rental housing should be increased. Third, support services should be improved in cooperation with the local welfare system. Finally, it is necessary to establish a new governance structure that promotes cooperation between the housing and welfare departments.

Linkage of people experiencing homeless using two consent models.

ObjectivesAdministrative data linkage is relatively under-utilised as a way of generating evidence to guide homelessness policy and service delivery in the UK. Our objective is to contribute insight into the ethical, legal, and practical challenges of using data linkage with data from people experiencing homelessness (PEH). ApproachWe outline the data collection and linkage methodologies for two UK-based studies related to PEH. The first design aimed to explore the acceptability and feasibility of consented linkage of trial data (‘Moving On’ trial) to NHS Digital records in a cohort of recruited PEH in two English local authorities (n=50). The second design used administrative data originating from a local authority homelessness service in Wales (n=17,000 cases) to explore educational outcomes of children in homeless households. The resultant data linkage rates are contrasted and discussed in relation to the mechanisms for obtaining and linking personal data. ResultsThe Moving On trial demonstrated high rates of consent for data linkage and the ability to collect sufficient personal identifiable data to increase the chance of successful matching. Aggregate match rates will be discussed. Of the roughly 17,000 cases included in the local authority administrative data, 75% could be linked to unique individuals using probabilistic matching and were therefor ‘useable’ in linkage research. The proportion of useable cases rapidly decreased as the cut-off for matching quality was increased, to roughly 50% of cases being useable when a 99% match probability cut-off was used. Matching rates were higher amongst priority need homeless cases, possibly reflecting business need to identify and work closely with these people. ConclusionWhere homelessness administrative data systems are not designed to enable data linkage, low matching rates can result, reducing study sample sizes and potentially leading to bias towards more extreme cases of homelessness if missed-matches are not random. Consented linkage within large-scale trials offers one possibility for generating long-term evidence.

How do you stay at home if you don’t have a home? Experiences of homeless persons at homeless shelters in Tshwane, South Africa during the COVID-19 pandemic

ABSTRACT Many homeless persons experience poverty, social marginalization, poor physical and mental health, and substance abuse disorders, which were all brought into sharp focus during the COVID-19 pandemic. Hence, the study explored the experiences of homeless persons at homeless shelters in Tshwane, South Africa during the period from 20 March to 25 April 2020 when the country was in hard lockdown. Guided by a qualitative case study research design, face-to-face interviews were conducted with nine homeless people. In terms of results, the main reasons for becoming homeless were drug problems and stealing; and domestic challenges and conflicts. Benefits from temporary accommodation at one or more shelters during the pandemic included the themes of safety, comfort and provision of basic needs; the opportunity to come off drugs and learn new skills; and assistance with family re-unifications. Challenges included difficulty complying with COVID-19 regulations under overcrowded conditions and living under stringent rules; violence; resentment at being treated like children; and issues around dietary needs, late delivery of food and leaking tents. Findings highlight the need for a review of the Tshwane homeless policy, integration of services and contingency plans for future national crises.

Seeing like a shadow state: an ethnography of homeless street outreach in the USA

ABSTRACT How do street outreach workers (SOWs) help govern homelessness? I present an ethnography from the USA to answer this question. Biopolitics is a mode of governance that manipulates fertility, morbidity, and/or mortality rates. The biopolitical turn in U.S. homeless policy obliges federally contracted SOWs – components of the shadow state – to perform morbidity assessments so local bureaucrats can manage exits from homelessness. Routine displacement of unhoused individuals generates surveillance gaps that SOWs fill by recruiting stakeholders with spatial information into their governing coalition. After finding a homeless contact, SOWs assess their morbidity in public spaces and upload this information to a centralized database that system managers use to monitor and manipulate population trends. Homeless contacts who cannot be located are uncounted, misclassified, and/or deprioritized for permanent housing assistance. The centrality of standardized health assessment highlights the salience of biopolitics to SOWs who enable local bureaucrats to see homeless subpopulations.

A typology of multiple exclusion homelessness

Quantitative exploration of sub-groups of people experiencing homelessness facing similar challenges, or multiple exclusion homelessness (MEH), is limited in Great Britain—as is discussion of what these groupings mean for policy and practice. Through secondary analysis of survey data from a study of single people experiencing homelessness in England, Scotland, and Wales, this paper aims to advance understanding of MEH. Using Latent Class Analysis, we explore several possible typologies of MEH before outlining a preferred typology composed of four groups: those facing high exclusion; those faced with low levels of exclusion; and two intermediate groups, one marked by trauma and mental ill-health, the other by offending and substance dependencies. When compared to international studies on MEH, findings point toward possible common combinations of exclusion amongst people experiencing homelessness drawn from different populations. The emergent policy and practice implications of this analysis demonstrate the value of scrutinising homelessness policy and practice internationally through a lens of MEH.