The 1998 National Symposium on Homelessness Research

Homeless people are, by definition, isolated from mainstream society. They lack stable housing, and often lack connections with jobs, families, and communities. This paper summarizes what we know about reconnecting homeless people and individuals into the community and in turn fostering self-sufficiency, including improving their residential stability and employability, and reuniting them with family and friends. Much has been learned in recent years about how to connect homeless people with stable housing. There have been several major housing initiatives and studies, the majority demonstrating that when homeless people obtain housing with appropriate supports—even those with multiple and severe problems—most stay stably housed. Furthermore, housing is best offered as the first step toward greater reconnection. Much less attention has been placed on testing ways to reconnect homeless people into the job market, with mixed results. The relative success of more comprehensive programs compared to approaches that concentrate only on employment suggests the need for efforts that integrate support services, housing, and job training and development services. Finally, although research continues to show that homeless people have few ties with families and friends, there have been no programs or efforts explicitly designed to improve the social capital of homeless individuals. In addition to reviewing what is known in each area, this paper discusses the barriers and challenges that continue to challenge efforts to reconnect people back into our communities. The paper concludes with a discussion of the implications of our knowledge for policy, practice, and research. Lessons for Practitioners, Policy Makers, and Researchers The literature on reconnecting homeless people to housing, jobs, families, and the community reviewed in this paper provide a number of lessons that can be useful to service-providers, policy-makers, and researchers. The research and practice conducted to date provide some direction for individual housing and social service providers, including the following: A coordinated approach to reconnection—the “three-legged stool” of housing, services, and employment—may offer the best prospects for reconnecting people. Housing and employment may be best tailored to people’s needs and preferences, suggesting that a range of housing and employment opportunities is needed. Helping people re-establish ties with family, friends, and the community may be difficult, but providing stable housing and employment opportunities may help renew, or create new ties. The policy implications from what has been learned so far are: Initiatives should emphasize housing first for reconnecting people to society. The major challenge to reconnection is replicating housing programs on a broader scale. Greater flexibility needs to be built into social and medical programs to encourage rather than deter people from seeking employment. Employment and training efforts should be complemented with other programs or initiatives to increase wages or supplement earnings. Finally, although much has been learned about effectively working with homeless people, many questions remain. Research questions highlighted by the material reviewed in this paper include: What combinations of services and housing are most effective, for whom? (For example, what services are http://aspe.hhs.gov/progsys/homeless/symposium/11-Reconn.htm The 1998 National Symposium on Homelessness Research 2 of 30 essential? When is transitional housing necessary?) What options can effectively serve individuals with active substance abuse problems? What employment approaches are most effective? (For example, under what conditions can affirmative businesses are self-supporting?)