This bulletin is based on research conducted by Associate Professor Guy Johnson and Professor Gavin Wood at the AHURI Research Centre—RMIT University, and Dr Rosanna Scutella and Dr Yi-Ping Tseng at Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research. This project examined the structural and individual risk factors in explaining homelessness—including its dynamics (entry into and exit f...

UNLABELLED POLICY POINTS: A retrospective analysis of federally funded homeless research in the 1980s serves as a case study of how politics can influence social and behavioral science research agendas today in the United States. These studies of homeless populations, the first funded by the National Institute of Mental Health, demonstrated that only about a third of the homeless population was...

BACKGROUND The forces which affect homelessness are complex and often interactive in nature. Social forces such as addictions, family breakdown, and mental illness are compounded by structural forces such as lack of available low-cost housing, poor economic conditions, and insufficient mental health services. Together these factors impact levels of homelessness through their dynamic relations. ...

Though distinctions are commonly drawn between the long-term and more recently homeless, our understanding as to the nature and shape of what Randall refers to as ‘homeless careers’ is limited as are our understandings of the dynamics driving those careers. This is because studies of homelessness have seldom incorporated a longitudinal dimension or have worked with only a simplistic and incompl...

BACKGROUND Veterans comprise a disproportionate fraction of the nation's homeless population, with women veterans up to four times more likely to be homeless than non-veteran women. This paper provides a grounded description of women veterans' pathways into homelessness. METHODS Three focus groups were held in Los Angeles, California, with a total of 29 homeless women veterans. RESULTS Five...

Homelessness and the associated feelings of loss are highly distressing for parents and their children who experience them. The implications for young, homeless children are clinically significant, as these children tend to display higher rates of depressive, anxious feelings. The literature suggests that parents are especially challenged during a period of homelessness, as they cannot provide ...

Using multivariate logistic regression, we examined the prevalence and correlates of homelessness among youth enrolled in a community-recruited prospective cohort known as the At-Risk Youth Study (ARYS), between September 2005 and October 2006. Of 478 individuals included in this analysis, 132 (27.6%) were female and 120 (25.1%) self-identified as Aboriginal. The median age was 22 (IQR: 20-24)....

BACKGROUND Housing instability has been associated with poor health outcomes among people who inject drugs (PWID). This study investigates the associations of local-level housing and economic conditions with homelessness among a large sample of PWID, which is an underexplored topic to date. METHODS PWID in this cross-sectional study were recruited from 19 large cities in the USA as part of Na...

The problem of widespread homelessness among mentally ill persons is often attributed to changes in mental health law. In consequence, suggestions for addressing homelessness frequently involve legal interventions, including loosening of commitment standards. A review of the limited data on the relation of legal standards to homelessness suggests that the problem is not primarily a result of st...