Reflections on Working with Homeless People

As a housing case manager in a homeless shelter, I work closely with homeless people every day. While there is an important place for the tools of social science in understanding the challenges they face, we should not distance ourselves emotionally from the homeless and treat them as stereotypes rather than as unique individuals. My main task in the shelter is to help the guests find their way through the almost impenetrable maze of government programs that are supposed to assist them in finding housing and work. Yet, about one-third of homeless people struggle with some form of mental illness, which adds to the complexity of serving them in a shelter. Physical disabilities, substance abuse, and criminal backgrounds create additional obstacles for a large number of homeless people. Those problems are often caused or compounded by homelessness. The primary cause of homelessness does not lie in the people themselves but in the capitalist system. Homelessness will remain a chronic problem until we create a society and economy in which accountability is localized, and communities on the scale of neighborhoods are strengthened to the point that they can respond to problems humanely.     

Making the Prevention of Homelessness a Priority: The Role of Social Innovation

Mass homelessness emerged in Canada in the wake of neoliberal policies that reduced government production of housing and other supportive measures. Efforts to reduce homelessness have occurred in three stages: 1) an emergency response in the 1990s that consisted mostly of investment in shelters, soup kitchens, and day programs, 2) the implementation of community plans to end homelessness, combined with the adoption of Housing First as a strategy that seeks to provide reliable shelter as a first step to anyone without it, followed by other remedial services, and 3) the recent development in Canada of early intervention strategies to prevent homelessness from its inception. The second stage was highly successful in dealing with the situation of chronically homeless adults, and many communities have begun to see reductions in homelessness. However effective, this approach does not break the cycle by intercepting potentially homeless individuals in their youth, which is when it begins for many people. Canada is at the beginning stages of the move towards a stronger focus on prevention, aided by a social innovation agenda to identify, design, test, and evaluate preventive interventions to determine which ones will be most strategically effective, setting the stage for implementation and going to scale.     

Perceptions,Persecution and Pity: The Limitations of Interventions for Homelessness in Developing Countries

Interventions for homelessness in developing countries are frequently negative and unhelpful. They tend to exist in an environment of hostility, suspicion and apathy towards homeless people. This environment is cultivated and enhanced by negative and derogatory language and images used by politicians, the public and the media in their portrayal of homeless people as unemployed, beggars, drunks and criminals. Findings from a recently completed study of homelessness in nine developing countries suggest that this perception is largely false. This article argues that, until the popular misconception of homeless people is corrected, even the most well‐intentioned interventions will have little long‐term effect.     

Homelessness in the Russian Federation: Regional and Local Context

The problem of homelessness in the Russian Federation has deep roots in history. Throughout much of the past century, it was a result of displacement of children during revolution, civil war, and wars with foreign powers. Even now, many of the economic problems that cause homelessness in Russia result from sanctions imposed by foreign governments. This article explains the roles of the state and charities in ameliorating the contemporary situation of people without housing. One of the most important programs of one charity involves providing some form of paid work to everyone in the shelters, so that residents can feel a sense of self-worth often lacking in purely charitable ventures. In the long run, no specialized programs that target the homeless can make a dent in the problem unless the state, civil society, and housing developers work together to produce more decent housing in cities and create more jobs in rural areas that are currently facing depopulation. The recent introduction of escrow accounts to reduce fraud in housing finance is already making a difference in promoting increased housing construction.     

The duration of homelessness: evidence from a national survey

This paper provides evidence on the determinants of the duration of homelessness. We use newly available data from a large-scale, comprehensive microeconomic survey to estimate a parametric survival model of the length of a spell of homelessness. We find that homeless spells are longer for persons with certain demographic characteristics (such as older men) and behavioral histories (for example, previous incarceration and a history of drug and alcohol abuse). Our results suggest that current eligibility criteria for receiving housing assistance, which give preference to drug-free, single women with young children, are unlikely to reduce homelessness substantially and in a cost-effective manner.     

Do Homeless Shelter Conditions Determine Shelter Population? The Case of the Dinkins Deluge

We study why families enter and leave homeless shelters. After 2 years of decline, the number of homeless families in New York City's shelter system began rising again in summer 1990 and continued to rise until it hit an all-time record high in summer 1993. The conventional wisdom is that a flood of new families were attracted into shelters by the Dinkins administration's aggressive policy of placing homeless families into subsidized housing. We test the conventional wisdom and reject it. Better prospects of subsidized housing increase flows into the shelter system, but this effect is not nearly large enough to offset the first order shelter effect—taking families out of the shelters reduces the number of families in them. Why did the shelter population grow after Spring 1990? A major part of the reason is that the city responded to conventional wisdom and slowed placement into subsidized housing. Other major factors were the 1990–92 recession, falling real welfare benefits and more NYCHA applications, and greater use of more attractive Tier II shelters instead of hotels.     

Pictures of me: user views on their representation in homelessness fundraising appeals

There is a long‐standing ethical debate regarding the ‘right’ representation of recipients in charity marketing materials that are intended to accurately define and represent social problems whilst also prompting the maximum response in voluntary income. The study presented in this article makes a contribution to that debate by highlighting the views of charity beneficiaries regarding their representation in fundraising campaigns. Drawing on data from five focus groups conducted in cities across England, we explore the views of young homeless people regarding the images of homelessness that appeared in major charity campaigns aimed at raising money to fund homelessness services. Participants displayed a high level of reflexivity, demonstrating that they understood the issues involved with homelessness and the perceptions of people like themselves that exist in the public sphere and in the consciousness of potential donors. Although the participants held the view that maximising revenues through the use of simple, eye‐catching images is the prime goal of fundraising, they also expressed a desire for more nuanced campaigns that tell the dynamic stories of how people become homeless and the use of imagery that elicits empathy rather than merely arouses sympathy. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Homelessness in Dublin: An Irish Urban Disorder

A bstract . Urban homelessness in Dublin has emerged as one of Ireland's most serious socioeconomic problems. Etiological explanations for the estimated 1,200 homeless individuals in the capital range from personal problems to the structure of Irish society. Empirical examination reveals that many Irish are drawn into the homeless network through personal crises such as poor health, alcoholism, economic deprivation , and psychiatric disturbances. However, it is the inequitable social, economic, political , and legislative system which ordinarily entraps them in this deprived state. Thus the causes of Irish homelessness are fundamentally structural. The Irish Government has no policy or program for assisting the urban homeless. Consequently, they have become wards of charitable agencies ill-equipped to care properly for them. Reform legislation seems to be needed. But public apathy and prejudice suggests that it will not be enacted soon.     

Providing Shelters or Low Income Housing? An Optimal Control Model

An optimal control model is developed to model the choice between short-term safety nets (shelter beds) and longer term investments (low income housing) for the alleviation of literal homelessness (people sleeping on the street). Society's objective function depends negatively on literal homelessness and the budget expenditure to fight it. A steady-state saddle point solution is found. The model is extended to take into account incentive effects in the provision of shelters and leakage effects in the provision of low income housing.Journal of Economic Literature ClassificationNumbers: H53, R21, C61.     

Homelessness and the Universal Family in China

Depending on how one defines homelessness, China has either a very tiny homeless population or an extremely large one. Compared to other countries, there very few vagrants: people living on the streets of China's cities without means of support. But if one counts the people who migrated to cities without a legal permit (hukou), work as day laborers without job security or a company dormitory, and live in overcrowded and unsanitary conditions on the edge of cities, there are nearly 300 million homeless. Free market fundamentalism is responsible for the emergence of this sort of homelessness in China. We review China's recent new policies to tackle homelessness and offer suggestions based on the traditional Chinese wisdom, which includes the concept of the universal family (family - tian xia). Homelessness in China must be addressed as a cultural problem caused by the breakdown of ancient methods of social integration. Treating it merely as a housing deficit will fail.     

Times and Spaces of Homeless Regulation in Japan, 1950s–2000s: Historical and Contemporary Analysis

Since the late 1970s, Atlantic Fordism has seen rising homelessness and ghettoization as the ‘new urban poverty’ (NUP) (Mingione, 1996). Despite some similarities, the NUP in Japan has a unique rhythm and spatial pattern. In order to explore Japanese NUP, this article develops an interpretation of Japan's strategies to regulate poverty and homelessness during the last 50 years, paying particular attention to the spatial consequences of such strategies within major Japanese cities. First, I theorize long‐term economic growth patterns as a basic parameter of poverty and homelessness regulation and present a periodization of Japanese trends since the 1950s. Second, I analyze poverty in Japan and the transformation of national strategies of spatial regulation in the 1990s, when homelessness grew. Third, I examine the multi‐scalar processes through which new regulatory spaces of homelessness were produced in the 1990s and 2000s, when failures of post‐bubble crisis management ballooned in Japan. I argue that, through a dialectic between national/local rule‐setting and homelessness, the Japanese state fragmented the dominant scale of poverty regulation, rescaled the site of homeless regulation and contained homelessness in relatively autonomized cities. I conclude that, from the 1990s until the late 2000s, Japan's homelessness and its contradictions tended to be transferred to the spheres of urban workfare and urban policing, which I call new regulatory spaces of homelessness, that lie around the fringes of national social rights.     

Consumer response to social entrepreneurship: the case of the Big Issue in Scotland

The Big Issue is the most prominent example of social entrepreneurship in the UK. Initially started as a nonprofit organisation, it is now a limited company that provides homeless individuals with the opportunity to earn an income and donates its profits to a charity that addresses problems of homelessness. The paper explores how consumer response to the Big Issue is influenced by the fact that the magazine is sold by homeless people themselves. The findings suggest that consumers buy it both because they like the magazine and because they believe that they are helping the homeless, often paying more than the magazine cover price for the latter reason. The results also reveal that consumers see the direct involvement of homeless people in the exchange positively, recognising it as an empowering process. Copyright © 2002 Henry Stewart Publications     

Is shared housing a way to reduce homelessness? The effect of household arrangements on formerly homeless people

Most single adults share housing with other adults, and living alone is considerably more expensive than living with someone else. Yet policies that discourage shared housing for formerly homeless people or people at risk of becoming homeless are common, and those that encourage it are rare. This would be understandable if such housing adversely affected its users in some way. We ask whether shared housing produces adverse effects. Our provisional answer is no. For the most part, whether a person lives alone or shares housing seems to make no difference to the outcomes we studied although shared housing is associated with reduced psychotic symptomology. We use data from ACCESS, a 5-year, 18-site demonstration project with over 6000 formerly homeless individuals as participants.     

Wrong person and wrong place: for homelessness,the conjunction is what matters

Studies of homelessness that use city-level observations get systematically different results from studies that use individual-level data. I explain why. The findings are consistent with a model of homelessness as a condition requiring a conjunction of unfortunate circumstances.     

The health issues of the homeless and the homeless issues of the ill-health

In public policy planning and budgeting, the health issues and homeless issues tend to be interrelated and reinforced by each other, but this mutual causality is usually ignored in the existing literature. This paper provides an unbiased estimate of a structural equation model taking endogeneity into account. A questionnaire is designed based on the health-related quality of life (EQ-5D) framework and is given to 322 homeless individuals. Evidence shows that, without timely support, the homeless state and health state will fast deteriorate and reinforce each other. It is therefore arguable to broaden the definition of statutory homelessness, and the “preventative approach” can save, rather than increase, the public resources spent on the homeless.     

Visible Homelessness in a “Liveable City”: Municipal Responses to Homelessness in Melbourne

Despite considerable national and urban prosperity, significant numbers of Australians are homeless. How local governments engage with homelessness has significant implications for the homeless population. In recent years, municipal strategies have inclined towards the maintenance of public order at the cost of the rights of homeless individuals. In this article, we investigate the approach to homelessness proposed by the City of Melbourne in 2017, which centered on the expansion of powers to remove individuals and the confiscation of possessions, testing the council’s claims as to the impact of visible homelessness upon local businesses and upon other users of public spaces.     

Optimal consumption under uncertainty,liquidity constraints,and bounded rationality

I study how boundedly rational agents can learn a “good” solution to an infinite horizon optimal consumption problem under uncertainty and liquidity constraints. Using an empirically plausible theory of learning I propose a class of adaptive learning algorithms that agents might use to choose a consumption rule. I show that the algorithm always has a globally asymptotically stable consumption rule, which is optimal. Additionally, I present extensions of the model to finite horizon settings, where agents have finite lives and life-cycle income patterns. This provides a simple and parsimonious model of consumption for large agent based models.     

Dr. Martin Bronfenbrenner (1914-1997): Scholar, Critic, Cynic, and Comrade-in-Arms

ABSTRACT Professor Martin Bronfenbrenner's mark on the economics profession was significant and worth remembering. He touched the lives of many as a father, cousin, teacher, scholar, expert referee, colleague, and judge of important contemporary debates. Of special interest is his unique personality. He was a specialist in self-effacement, peppered with liberal shakes of cynicism and sarcasm. Despite all this, he managed to win the respect and hearts of individuals on several continents and across several generations. This essay brings a small but diverse part of the story together in one place.     

Evaluation and monitoring of community youth prevention programs using a robust productivity index

Evidence-based prevention and intervention programs for youth behavioral and mental problems have been implemented by many local community program providers. Due to the differences among communities in resource availability and the demand for services, however, policymakers and program practitioners require ways of measuring organizational efficiency in terms of resource commitment and improvement in individual outcomes. In this paper, we propose a robust productivity index for monitoring managerial performance and detecting exceptions in dynamic environments. Robust productivity bounds are constructed to identify innovators who make a technical shift. The approach is illustrated with panel data on youth outcomes from a selected multi-site community prevention program between the fiscal years 2010 and 2015. The results suggest that our approach not only permits classification of the innovators, but also recognizes patterns of change in productivity.