Rural Homelessness: Identifying and Understanding

Lack of awareness or recognition of homelessness The June issue of In Focus provides a synthesis of recent literature on rural homelessness. Homelessness is often conceptualized as an urban issue, which is reflected by the dearth of research on homelessness in rural areas. In reality, homelessness is pervasive in rural communities due to high rates of poverty, unemployment or underemployment, lack of affordable housing, and geographic isolation. This issue of In Focus will address the changing rural landscape, challenges to identifying the homeless population, patterns of homelessness, service access and delivery barriers, and promising practices in service delivery in the context of rural settings. A few limitations exist regarding the literature shared, namely the specificity of studies to certain rural communities and some outdated references due to a lack of recent literature on the topic.