This brief is based on a new Urban Institute Press book, Helping America’s Homeless: Emergency Shelter or Affordable Housing? by Urban Institute researchers Martha Burt, Laudan Y. Aron, and Edgar Lee, with Jesse Valente. Both publications were funded mainly by the Melville Charitable Trust and the Fannie Mae Foundation.

The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Institute, its trustees, or its sponsors.

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WHY HOMELESSNESS HERE, AND WHY NOW? (continued)

Disabilities

Many homeless adults have physical and other types of disabilities. Almost half (46 percent) reported chronic physical conditions. Problems with alcohol, drugs, and mental health among homeless people are well documented and often occur together. Among adults using homeless services, 31 percent reported a combination of mental health and substance abuse problems (alcohol and/or drugs) within the past year. An additional 17 percent reported problems with drugs and/or alcohol problems, but no mental health problems. Further, 12 percent reported only problems with alcohol, and 15 percent reported only mental health problems. Only one in four homeless adults did not report any mental health or substance abuse problems during the past year.

Childhood Homelessness

The homeless population includes not only adults but also the children these adults bring with them into homelessness. One-fourth of homeless people are children in homeless families. These children are much more likely than housed children to experience serious difficulties, including physical, cognitive, emotional, and mental problems. Further, childhood homelessness translates into a greater risk of homelessness in adulthood.

Most children living with homeless parents are very young (42 percent are under age 6) and are therefore physically and emotionally vulnerable in the event of household disruptions. Children living with homeless parents, however, are not the only children affected by homelessness. Three out of five homeless people are parents, and half these parents have at least one child age 17 or younger. But only one in four of these children live with the homeless parent.

Children of homeless mothers are much more likely to stay with their homeless parent (54 percent) than are children of homeless fathers (7 percent). Children of homeless fathers typically live with their mothers outside of homelessness. Children not living with their homeless mothers tend to live with relatives other than their fathers (46 percent) or in foster care (19 percent). A period in foster care is a strong predictor of future homelessness.

Predictors of Homelessness

As noted earlier, societal factors create the conditions within which individual characteristics can lead to homelessness. Of individual factors, extreme poverty (incomes at less than half the federal poverty level) is, of course, the most important predictor. Virtually every study shows that adverse childhood experiences are also strong predictors of homelessness. These experiences include physical and/or sexual abuse by family members and removal from one’s home to be placed in foster care or other institutions. Also important are alcohol or drug abuse as a teenager, current alcohol or drug abuse, mental health problems, chronic physical problems, and, for males, incarceration.

Patterns of Homelessness

Clearly, homeless people’s lives differ in many ways. The pattern of a person’s homelessness reveals much information about how to intervene and ways to reduce or eliminate such episodes. People who are homeless for the first time and experiencing a single crisis may need relatively simple remedies, such as rental assistance, help negotiating with landlords, or referrals to public benefits or services. Persons with repeated or long episodes of homelessness, however, are likely to need considerably more support for longer periods of time.

The proportion of people displaying a particular homelessness pattern is hard to calculate, because the definitions of homelessness and the type of data used in such calculations differ widely. Using the most common type of data—surveys conducted at a single point in time—about one-fourth of homeless people report being continuously homeless for at least five years, and about one-fourth say they have gone in and out of homelessness numerous times. The rest (about half) are experiencing a first or second episode, which has usually lasted less than a year, or in some cases, only a few weeks or months.

Data reflecting longer periods—for example, one year—capture many of the people experiencing short-term crises who leave homelessness as well as the additional people entering short-term homelessness. People who have weathered many episodes also tend to leave and return, or to leave and be replaced by others. Meanwhile, chronically homeless people remain without a place to live during the entire period. By the end of the year, chronically homeless people will make up a smaller proportion of the homeless population during the year than at a single point in time. Conversely, those with very short spells will account for a higher proportion of the population over a year’s time than on any given day.

The experience of the past 15 years indicates that the number of very poor people driven into homelessness for at least short periods has not diminished significantly. Families with children are still a large part of the mix. Over the past 15 years, the resources of the homeless service system, which gives people in desperate circumstances a place to go for help, have also increased. While essential, these services make visible and undeniable the severity of structural factors currently operating to produce homelessness.

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