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Despite drastic and severe fiscal cuts in services to the homeless, their need continues to remain very high. Men are a particularly vulnerable group among the homeless and continue to struggle with substance abuse, mental illness, and physical health issues. When faced with these struggles, men are often reluctant to ask for help. The results indicate that the men surveyed are not likely to seek help for their physical and psychological struggles. We examined other risk factors to homeless men including amount of alcohol and drug use, length of homelessness, gender role conflict and susceptibility to committing a violent act. Limitations to the study are presented and discussed as well. Keywords: homelessness, men, help-seeking behavior, gender role conflict, violence, Homeless men and women are often visible on the street corners and benches in most large urban cities and rural communities. Many are recognizable by their unkempt appearance, displays of [...]

This study explored sociodemographic variables, childhood characteristics, and family factors in the Puerto Rican homeless. The study is a secondary analysis in which a Puerto Rican homeless sample (N = 113) is compared with a Puerto Rican primary care patient group (N = 102). Discriminant function analysis was employed to determine if family and childhood risk factors accurately distinguish the primary care and homeless samples. The results indicated that the homeless sample was significantly more likely to endorse living in foster care, ?2 (1, N = 207) = 7.057, p = .008; being abandoned by their family ?2(1, N = 192) = 32.522, p < .001; experiencing the death of both parents ?2(1, N = 191) = 9.0, p < .05; and having no family support ?2(1, N = 194) = 6.094, p = .014, than the primary care population. The model of childhood and family risk factors correctly classified 84% of the sample, suggesting that combinations of factors are more predictive of risk for homelessness than any one variable. Among assessed factors, the death of a close family member, being abandoned by family, and the death of both parents were the best sample discriminators.

Social workers' bodies and identities are gendered. This article examines gender relations in social workers' accounts of their practices using data from a qualitative study that focused on social workers' responses to homelessness in three Australian cities. Themes in the data relate to essentialist notions of gender; gender functioning as an invisible form of oppression; heterosexual assumptions in client-worker relationships; and the preferability of feminist approaches, particularly when working with women's homelessness that is a result of domestic violence. Keywords homelessness, social work and gender

This study illuminates aspects of social life within agencies designed to house homeless adolescents through research conducted at a live-in, emergency youth shelter The shelter provides physical necessities, safety, life skills, and a 'consistent' social environment through its operation as a quasi-total institution. Social life within the shelter is characterized by constant negotiation of the curricular imposition of 'structure.' External boundaries become more or less permeable as a result of the degrees to which shelter residents and staff challenge or conform to rules meant to define them. Shelter curriculum may be critiqued for treating adolescent homelessness as an individual rather than social problem, where rules simultaneously emphasize the modification of individual behaviors and serve as social control mechanisms. Shelter residents, whose poverty and homelessness are only marginally connected to personal behaviors or choices, mount (at times) conscious opposition to rules sanctioning their personal freedoms and access to the outside world. Keywords: adolescents; homelessness; total/quasi-total institutions; rules; resistance

Since its recognition as a social problem in the 1980s, homelessness has not abated. A signature feature of contemporary homelessness is a life in public. Sociological research on the relationship between 'sheltered' and 'street' homeless populations emphasize their overlapping nature. Yet many homeless people who create ''makeshift' housing solutions actively resist shelterization and contest the view that they are in fact homeless. Examining the resources and risks associated with makeshift housing suggests that it provides increased social and structural opportunities yet comes with risks that threaten community longevity. Vehicles are a type of makeshift housing that offer the potential for privacy, ownership, and mobility, unique resources among makeshifts. Using the case of otherwise homeless people living in their vehicles in Santa Barbara, California, this article examines how they acquire and maintain their vehicles and explores the conditions that provide for or threaten their status as a semipermanent housing solution. Keywords: homelessness; makeshifts; RVs; shelterization; vehicle dwelling

The presence of homeless persons in or near residential areas has been characterized as a marker of encroaching urban disorder that undermines neighborhood quality and engenders fear among residents. Using data compiled from a national survey, the author tests these assumptions by assessing how residential exposure to homelessness influences domiciled respondents. Those who encounter a neighborhood homeless presence or who live near shelters are likely to witness a range of disorderly and orderly behaviors on the part of homeless persons. These residents tend to view homelessness as a large and growing community problem but do not attribute neighborhood decline to the homeless themselves. Contrary to disorder perspectives, residential exposure to homelessness is unrelated to fear among residents. Keywords: homelessness; neighborhood; disorder; urban

This article explores the relationships between homeless women and their intimate partners. Based on results from a focus group of homeless women at a domestic violence shelter and 20 in-depth interviews with women at two centers for the homeless, the authors suggest that the nature of the intimate relationships homeless women have are varied and impact their social exclusion and subsequent homelessness in different ways. For instance, women may become homeless without their partners or with them, by force or by choice. Homeless women may be financially dependent on the partner, but they also may be providing the only income for the family. Ultimately, the authors explicate the complex intersection between women's homelessness and their adult relationships to add to the understanding of homeless women. Keywords: violence; women; intimate relationships; homelessness; abuse

This article traces the origins of the recent growth of homelessness in Japan to the following three structural changes that occurred in the 1980s in association with economic globalization: (a) a shift from a manufacturing to a service economy, (b) urban redevelopment, and (c) government policy shifts toward deregulation and privatization. The study indicates that a growing segment of Japan's low-income workforce has been subject to exclusion from employment, housing, and welfare. Keywords: homelessness; day labor; globalization; social exclusion; Japan

The American paradigm of propertied citizenship has far-reaching consequences for the propertyless, as in the brutal criminalization of the homeless. Activist groups, such as the anarchist squatter organization Homes Not Jails, have sought to challenge this paradigm through innovative techniques of property takeovers, invocations of American traditions of homesteading, and Third World tactics of self-help and informality. This study trains a transnational lens on both the paradigm and its subversions. Posing Third World questions of the First World, the author seeks to unsettle the normalized hierarchy of development and underdevelopment and explores lessons that can be learned from different modes of shelter struggles. Keywords: homelessness; housing; citizenship; transnational; welfare state

Houston is selected as an extreme case to test the hypothesis that homelessness results from a mismatch between the supply of rental housing affordable to the poor and the demand for low-cost housing. In 1983, Houston had a rental vacancy rate of 18% but also had a large and growing homeless population. Annual Housing Survey data for 1976-83 show that rent increases in Houston far exceeded the rate of inflation, while renter incomes stagnated. Hardest hit were low-income blacks, who are disproportionately represented among the homeless population in Houston. Rent inflation in the face of massive vacancies is an indication that expected market forces will not meet the housing needs of the poor.

Lack of human capital, social alienation, psychiatric pathology, and exposure to stressful life events have all been offered as theoretical explanations for chronic homelessness. In this study, a multiple regression equation that included variables from all four theoretical orientations did significantly predict the length of time homeless. However, only a small percentage of the total significantly predict the length of time homeless. However, only a small percentage of the total variance of chronic homelessness could be explained by these individual-difference variables. Additional research is needed to determine if societal-level varieties are more powerful predictors of chronic homelessness.

The difficulties surrounding research on homelessness are numerous and substantial. Using a statewide census of homelessness, this article analyzes and critiques common methodological techniques employed in that study. In addition, using cross-tabulation and loglinear modeling, the relationship between key demographic variables and the cited primary cause of homelessness, as well as the types of housing needed, are assessed. Through a multiphased process, which isolates the effects of the operationalized definition of homelessness, significant changes emerge. The operational definition of homelessness is found to affect the demographic composition of the sample, the estimation of annual incidents of homelessness, and the estimation of the statewide number of homeless individuals. The impact of the uncertainty surrounding research on homelessness on policy formation is addressed.

This article reports on qualitative interviews with 25 women who were former residents of an emergency shelter. The interviews used a personal narrative approach to place the onset of homelessness within the context of the women's lives. They revealed that the onset of homelessness was different for working and nonworking women and that the women gained new perspectives on their problems from living in a shelter. They viewed homelessness as part of the process of solving worse problems.