Transitioning From Homelessness

AHURI (the Australian Housing And Urban Research Institute Limited), the agency responsible for research about housing and homelessness in Australia, has just published a report about safety in emergency...

A team of researchers based in Toronto have just published an article about safety in homeless shelters. The research was triggered by accounts from homeless people who have stayed...

Josephus Anderson is lucky to have chosen Detroit for his home. It could be because it has low housing prices and low rents when compared with other large cities...

When you hear the word disability in the context of housing, what comes to mind? ramps wide doorways roll in showers a place of your own an extra...

In Virginia, a new housing program for young people experiencing homelessness is under development. It is called Marsha and Marian's Neighbors.The program design is based on guidance from a...

The stories that sell news are the disasters and things gone wrong. As someone said elsewhere, "it's not news when a plane lands safely." In the housing business this means...

The mere existence of live-in vehicles has meant they've been quietly used as houses for 'homeless' people for decades. In America, there are still huge expanses of wilderness in...

Trauma-informed care takes account of the possibility that a person who is seeking services has experienced trauma. For people who are homeless, the possibility of experiencing trauma is much...

Research has taught us something about different experiences of homelessness. One word that comes up over and over again is violenceTry: Violence And Women’s Experiences Of Homelessness. The purpose of...

The article linked to this post is about what it's like to experience homeless in two cities in Ontario. It's also about what people experience when they leave homelessness...

What is it like to be homeless? Even if they want to know, people who have housing may have limited opportunities to find out. This post offers two perspectives,...

Like virtually all North American cities, Thunder Bay, Ontario faces the reality of persistent homelessness. Like a smaller number of cities, indigenous people make up a portion of Thunder...

With roughly one in three people who are homeless having mental health or drug abuse issues, the growing numbers of people on the streets without shelter is creating antagonism...

Time was, if you were short on a household item, you'd ask a neighbour to help you out. In today's world, the idea might seem laughable. Would your neighbour...

Affordablehousingaction.org has done a number of posts about the potential of 'tiny mobile homes.' For example, try this pre-COVID one that celebrates tiny-ness while questioning just where it might...

A randomized control trial about homelessness services in the United States . . . , you may be rolling your eyes. Yet another randomized control trial? Here are two...

With all of the reports about tent clearances across North America, it is encouraging to learn that there are some places where the rights of people living in encampments...

Much staff discussion and laughter erupted in the halls of a Toronto hospital while this writer awaited day surgery. Shortly thereafter, bouts of singing and more laughter filtered in...

So you're downtown, crossing with the light at a crosswalk. As you approach the middle, you take a wide tour around a shouting person man who is focussing a...

Affordablehousingaction.org has emphasized the importance of ensuring that there are  mental health and drug treatment supports for people who are moving from chronic homelessnessChronic homelessness means homelessness lasting for...

From . . . temporary affordable housing that isn't housing anyone at all while it takes a lengthy snooze. Read more in The Seattle Times: The story of Seattle’s homeless...

In the days leading up to the 2023-24 Federal Budget, here's an article in the Ottawa Citizen. It promotes a proposed Canadian Housing Benefit to help people with very...

The latest fad(?) in solving homeless problems has been dominated by fed-up citizens endlessly encountering dangerous(?) chronic homeless people on the streets. Responding to the concerns of their citizens,...

A warning to readers. This post might be a bit of a downer. Being the middle of winter and all, it's a time when tough stuff can be particularly...

California has the largest number of homeless people per capita in the U.S. It is largely an urban problem, highly visible, much talked about nationally and beyond. Vermont, the state...

The following problem is a conundrum for all social housing suppliers virtually everywhere in the world. We're going to examine that problem in Canada's Yukon Territory, where the homeless...

For many of us, housing is the biggest single cost in a household budget. And, we do our best to make sure that housing costs are covered — if/when...

Karen Bass is the new mayor of Los Angeles, California. She is putting her career on the line by committing to tackle effectively that city's mega-homelessness problem. Already she's winning...

New York City and California are struggling to get mental health interventionist programs for the homeless off the ground. It hasn't been easy going for either initiative. On both...

Reviewer Judy Stone, an infectious disease specialist, uses a periscope of chronic homelessness to capture a view of a growing housing crisis in America. Stone focuses first upon a...

The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (DVA) has recently reported that 2021, the first year of the Biden presidency, saw a significant reduction in the number of homeless veterans....

So you're American. Suppose you want to join the military, put your life on the line for your country (and earn the dollars that can lift you out of...

The Canadian Alliance to End Homelessness (CAEH) is calling for a homelessness prevention and housing benefit to help bring homelessness in Canada under control. The number of people who are...

Researchers in England have done a massive review of evidence about health and social care for people who are homeless. The justification for the review itself comes from evidence:...

Housing First! It's the name as well as the desirable initial action. The Finland-created method for helping the homeless off the streets has been so successful that it's in...

Arguments can be (and are) made about the folly of easing the grinding hell of circumstance that imprisons those without housing: "Governments at every level need to address this homeless...

At affordablehousingaction.org, we have pointed out some of the limitations of point-in-time (PIT) counts of people who are homelessTry: Fatal Flaw In Point-in-time Homeless Counts?. And earlier this year,...

A recent report has been published about housing and homelessness policy in Ireland. The report was commissioned by six voluntary agencies that are on the front line in delivering...

Isabel McDevitt kicks off her article for The Hill, with the following headline: The typical homeless person in America might surprise you. As she explains it, only one in five people who...

With all of the stories about tent clearances that are showing up in the news, here's somewhat more hopeful story from Portland, Oregon. A new centre that will open...

As we swing off Toronto's Lakeshore Boulevard away from Lake Ontario, we are caught frequently in a left-hand turn lane, waiting for a green light. Parading beside our car...

Seattle Lawyer Lisa Daugaard is no foe of the police. In 2019 she won a MacArthur “genius” award for her assistance in developing a police-involved court diversion program. It...

Sacramento, the State Capital of California, first appeared on our news radar in 2021. The city was promising a departure from standards of international tent encampment brutality towards the...

When is a home . . . with a sound roof overhead, with windows and lockable doors and storage space and access to kitchen bathroom facilities . . ....

American President George H.W. Bush's evocative description of charity — a thousand tiny points of light — has a problem. The lights wink on and off at different times....

Affordablehousingaction.org, has been consistently down on Section 8, a.k.a. Housing Choice, vouchers — once upon a time touted as the solution to America's truly affordable housing woes. The current federal commitment...

The results are in for Aspire — the first Australian social impact bond to address chronic homelessness. Aspire provided three years of intensive treatment and support for 575 people...

Harris County, Texas has had a Housing First program since 2011For more information about Housing First, try: What Is Housing First? Why Is It So Popular? and A Handbook...

Cities across Canada are clearing encampments. This post is about two different investigations of clearances that have taken place. The first is by students at Wilfred Laurier University, who have...

'Supportive housing' has its supporters and its detractors. The article linked to this post is by supporters. In this case, the supporters are researchers from the Urban Institute. The...

Supportive housing is supposed to be part of the solution to homelessness, not contributing to it. It's supposed to be the magic space where people who have been homeless...

A recent school shooting in Texas resulted in the deaths of 19 students, 2 teachers, and the wounding of others. Within a day, anecdotes about the life history of...

Governments in Canada and the United States are devotees of service coordination as the way to fix homelessness: by working together, we can all be more effective. In both...

Nearly a year ago now, the Texas legislature with the stroke of a pen turned the homeless into criminals. Of course, the law didn't quite say that. Instead, it...

Canada and the United States need more supportive housing, the kind that is affordable for people with very low incomes and provides support to help with activities of daily...

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) publishes a map with information about homelessness. The map indicates 161,548 people were homeless in California on any given night...

The Terner Center For Housing InnovationThe Terner Center For Housing Innovation is based at the University of California Berkeley. It has a long history of studying housing and homelessness...

New evidence from Canada shows that women and girls have different experiences of homelessness and precarious housing than men. It adds to other reports from CanadaTry: Shining A Spotlight...

The 'ahead of its time' horrors of George Orwell's book, 1984, has in some respects taken 40 years and more to catch up to the events predicted in its...

Intimidation, drug dealing, drug use and overdoses, petty crime, breaking and entering — what's that all about? Well, some might say it's just the same old Not In My...

In housing and homelessness circles, California is well known for its high housing costs and its tens of thousands of people who are living 'unsheltered.' California's Project Homekey is an...

Tiny Homes? Hug 'em and Love 'em! The Media seems to, including us. They're forever popping up as cozy little bandaid stories about the housing and homelessness crisis in...

Canada's National Housing Council has just released a report with a title that is hardly a headline grabber: Analysis of Affordable Housing Supply Created by Unilateral National Housing Strategy...

Businesses generally see visible homelessness as bad for business, sullying what might otherwise be 'beautiful downtown Seattle,' for example. Is it possible for the public interest in ending homelessness to...

Supportive housing has become an essential component in programs to end homelessness. At the same time, it seems that we still have a lot to learn about what supportive...

Oakville, Ontario's Norma Gamble is inventive. In existing single detached homes, she sees opportunities for shared living. And, with persuasion and an accommodating housing market, she's been able to...

In case you think you know what police officers are all about . . . Retired from a life as a community police officer, Paul VanHandel took a chunk of...

It may be hard to view closing an emergency shelter as a step forward for providing services to the homeless in the Kitchener-Waterloo region of Ontario. But the House of...

'Housing First' is a significant advance in moving people who are homeless from the streets and returning them to housing. It boils down to the idea that no amount...

A person who is experiencing homelessness intersects with another member of the public for any number of reasons. Let's pick one as charitably as possible. Suppose a member of...

Three people who are homeless are sitting on a park bench, content with sharing the little they have — tipsy conversation, laughter and a bottle of cheap wine. One...

"Despite the profoundly divergent impacts of COVID-19 globally, it appears that diverse policy makers, scholars, and community leaders can agree on one thing — the COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated...

It should come as a surprise to nobody that Canada has one of the colder climates in the world. It ranks number three after Antartica and Russia. As for for...

OK, we're running the risk of damning with faint praise California's "everyone in"Everyone In" was the name given to the United Kingdom's national directive to provide shelter for people...

There is nothing quite as satisfyingly new as a use found for something once dismissed as old and trashworthy. Take the old-fashioned phone call, for example. (Phones are still...

A UK charity-based work support program Freedom2Work (F2W) has now been tested for five years. With striking success, it has shown it can lift people who experience homelessness off...

Over the last few years, fascination with tiny homes has grown beyond cutesy love-ins for a lifestyle akin to living in a clothes closet. (And along with our own...

The international gospel for ending homelessness is a program known as Housing First. It has demonstrated itself to be so successful that many jurisdictions have tied their funding grants...

One unexpected benefit that all-too-briefly appeared during the COVID pandemic was the level of concern from national governments down to local ones for the plight of people who experience...

One80 Place is a shelter for people who experience homelessness in Charleston, South Carolina. Unusually for a shelter, it offers on-site legal services. A full time lawyer and paralegal...

Roughly one in three people who are chronically homelessChronic homelessness means homelessness lasting for a long time (typically six months) or multiple episodes of homelessness over an extended period...

If there's anything that everyone agrees upon, it's the inevitability of NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard). When the issue of new housing in a neighbourhood arises, almost nothing...

Is there an important lesson for all to be learned from precipitously "evicting" a homeless encampment? For Kansas City Council, together with its citizenry, it might be: slightly more...

As California's Homekey program is well aware, fighting homelessness is a three-pronged battle. Like an iceberg, the bulk of homelessness lies beneath the surface, invisible to the public. Addressing homelessness...

Medicine Hat is the first community in Canada to officially end chronic homelessness. The city is part of Built For Zero Canada, a national initiative to end homelessness. Asked...

The idea of getting homelessness down to zero might seem like an impossibility, but communities across Canada and the U.S. are working away at it. In fact, Medicine Hat,...

As hopes rise in countries where the pandemic may be on the wane, the homeless situation has not disappeared. Indeed, the threat of foreclosure on delinquent mortgages and well...

In the late 1800's in western countries, if people had problems they might seek help from family, neighbours or the local church. There were also hospitals, asylums, poor houses...

Here are two studies from the U.S. that discuss the merits of permanent supported housing for people who have prolonged experience of homelessnessBoth reports came to our attention via...

A 10 year old boy in the U.S. isn’t homeless any longer. His remarkable skill at chess has turned his family’s fortunes around and allowed them to leave a...

After hundreds of calls to landlords, Philadelphia's Office of Homeless Services has been able to put together a housing program to assist people who are homeless to leave the...

Utah's recent 63 million-dollar homeless "resource center" investment doesn't really put a dent in its visible homeless. Some of the reasons why are instructive for everyone. The Salt Lake City...

A recent article from London, Ontario expresses a problem made more acute in the pandemic. That city is home to a successful program based on getting housed immediately (Housing...

London, Ontario is one of the first communities to join Built For Zero Canada, a campaign that aims to end chronic and veteran homelessness. Built For Zero follows a prescribed set...

A useful article in the Kansas City Star explains with insight and compassion why the simple act of putting a chronic rough sleeper into their own home may well...

Who knows best about suitable treatments for someone with addiction and/or health issues? Why, the individual with the problems, of course! Well, maybe that person doesn't exactly know BEST, otherwise...

Ever ride a transit system and wonder where that homeless person dozing a few seats away will spend the night? Not in that seat, you'd probably predict with some...

Hotels and motels have always been dear to the emergency management heart. While some communities have other opportunities nearby (e.g. underused military barracks, student housing out of term-time), the...

How do tiny homes fit into a country's affordable housing scheme? The attraction of tiny homes is undeniable to certain kinds of imagination, impractical as they might seem to...

Well, we didn't actually go, there, but we found a story published in Australia that turned out to be exactly to the point. As free market renters, it never actually...