Rough Sleepers
Over two classes, we read Tracy Kidder’s “RoughSleepers” which captures the work (and relationships) of Dr. Jim and and the Street Team crew among Boston’s unsheltered homeless population.
Mental Health
Drug Use
- Oregon Decriminalization
- A Drug-Decriminalization Fight Erupts in Oregon
- A Manufactured Tragedy: The Origins and Deep Ripples of the Opioid Epidemic (Slides)
Population Overview
Highlights in part the challenges of matching homeless individual to census records. The match rate (69% rate in homeless shelters and 17% outdoor locations) is lower than the housed population (90% rate population). 44% of indviduals were employed in the previous year (table 3).
Cost Effectiveness
Focusing on Santa Clara Californai, Flaming et al. (2015) shows that for those experiencing “persistent homelessness”, the cost of providing housing (~$20,000) is less than the status quo (~$83,000).
Articles: Calfifornia’s Audit
Interm Supportive Housing
Intensive Homeless Prevention
Permanent Supportive Housing
We focus on work concerning Housing First. Using survival analysis techniques, Tsemeberis and Eisenberg (2000) illustrate that a Housing First approach improves housing stability relative to a linear contiuum of care.1 Tsemberis et al. (2004) is a helpful read in that it highlights some of the challenges of conducting empirical work in this setting - the need to oversample the control group in the design of the randomized control trial because they are expected to be more likely to remain homeless and therefore more difficult to track - interpreting reported alcohol and drug use.
Articles: PSH Denver 1, PSH Denver 2
Prevention Strategies
Elderly
Eduction
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A key question for this paper is how much work went into ensuring that clients in a Housing First program were able to maintain housing. The authors note that “The program will also use any means possible to reduce the risk of eviction that often results from drug use.” We’re tenants being relocated to different units if they were evicted? To really understand the effectiveness of the Housing First approach, it’s important to understand how the resources were deployed. ↩