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This study is part of a year long ethnographic investigation of a shelter for homeless women. The children who also live at this facility are accompanied by their mothers and other siblings and acclimate quickly to the shelter environment. However, the loss of cherished possessions due to their homeless condition as well as the inherent instability and uncertainty in their living arrangement lead these children to seek to restore a sense of self through friendships and fantasies. Social policy implications for improving their lives are briefly described. (Reprinted by permission of the publisher.), The problem of homelessness has become one of the most compelling social dilemmas of the last decade (King et al. 1989). This sub-population has become increasingly diverse (Hill and Stamey [...]

Control has emerged as an important psychological variable. The purpose of this project was to extend the concept of environmental control to the homeless shelter environment. Data from interviews conducted with residents of a homeless shelter supported the hypothesis that perceived loss of control over the shelter environment would be positively related to giving up on finding a home and employment. The hypothesis that the helplessness created by low control environments is consistent with the external, stable attributional style of 'universal' helplessness was partially supported. Suggestions for future research are provided. Changes in the shelter environment are recommended for the treatment of helplessness in the homeless though helplessness is expected to persist as long as poverty, expensive housing, and prejudice against the homeless make efforts and outcomes noncontingent.

Homelessness in rural America is a problem hardly recognized, little understood, and only minimally studied by rural sociologists. This article, based on long-term field research in upstate New York, sets the problem of rural homelessness in context, explains the increase in rural poverty that puts more people at risk of homelessness, and examines some trends in rural housing that reduce the ability of poorer residents to secure adequate shelter. The nature of housing insecurity and the strategies poor rural people use to keep themselves from becoming literally homeless are noted. Interviews and questionnaires conducted among insecurely-housed low-income people and interviews and records supplied by agencies and institutions serving the poor provide the information on which arguments are based. The conclusion is that the definition of homelessness should be broadened for rural usage to encompass poor people on the edge of or at high risk of homelessness; also, programs to assist the homeless and prevent homelessness must be appropriate for rural situations.

Even though individuals generally become homeless after living in an impoverished but domiciled 'vulnerable' state, few quantitative investigations consider determinants of the decline from vulnerability. This leaves in question the rather common claim that personal deficits are direct determinants of the lack of a domicile. Using data on a sample from Chicago, the study tests whether homeless and vulnerable domiciled individuals are differentiated by three sets of deficits: alienation, disabilities, and occupational deficiencies. It also assesses whether the loss of a domicile reflects a lack of access to support offered by social institutions. Variables representing lack of access are found to be the best predictors, but certain deficits have limited importance in specific subsamples. The generally limited role of deficits, in turn, seems to occur because the most problem ridden adults are protected from homelessness and from vulnerability. Differentials across gender as well as previous homeless history are also noted and explained.

Data on street youth housed in a shelter in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, was analyzed to determine whether the safe house serves the needs of homeless children and to compare the findings with those of a previous survey. Information analyzed was obtained from questionnaires filled out by the street children who stayed at the Calgary home. Analyses showed that the house successfully meets the immediate needs of the runaway children. Moreover, more youth in the present survey underscored the importance of providing counselling services than in the past survey.

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.

Hundreds of thousands of youth run away every year, yet little consideration has been given to the long-term effects of living on the street during the formative adolescent years. Past research has established that chronic runaways are largely fleeing from recurrent parental abuse. As a consequence of socialization both at home and on the streets, chronic runaways might be expected to have a difficult time adjusting to conventional adult roles. Hence, it is posited that many chronic runaways grow up to become homeless adults and that these individuals display higher rates of criminal behavior, substance abuse, and other forms of deviant behavior than the homeless characterized by more culturally normative childhoods. This thesis was tested using two samples: one composed of 84 adolescent runaways and a second of 266 homeless adults. The results largely support the hypothesis.

This study examined 40 homeless people and their health care needs in Baltimore. As the length of the homelessness episode increased, the person's health care needs became more complex. Health care services must be appropriate to three stages of homelessness-marginal, recent, and chronic. An understanding of these stages can help social workers ensure that homeless people receive correct medical treatment and that they are assisted in reconnecting with mainstream society.

A famine paradigm of low-income housing deficit in the USA first introduced by recent studies of homelessness in New York City is extended to understand how impacts of that deficit may be structured according to the social network length of low-income families. A simplified mathematical model suggests that poor families with truncated social support networks are most vulnerable to housing famine, and explores how the famine may synergistically interact with inadequacy of support, leading to their becoming homeless. This view contrasts with currently popular ideologically driven explanations of homelessness. On the one hand is the assertion that vulnerability to the housing deficit is the 'cause' of homelessness. On the other is the claim that simplistic housing strategies, in which the interaction of housing loss with the structure of vulnerability to that loss is not recognized, can end the US crisis of homelessness. The paper is concluded with a discussion of needed empirical studies and of policy implications.

In recent years, Title XX of the Social Security Act and the Social Services Block Grant decentralized the social service system. This is claimed to be an improvement because decentralization strengthens the match between needs and services, adds to the flexibility of workers and agencies, and increases efficiency. However, it is argued in this article that decentralization also contributes to some problematic service delivery patterns, such as specialization and selectivity, a lack of responsiveness to major shifts in patterns of needs, and a loss of effective advocacy to sustain appropriations. This argument is used to explain dilemmas in serving the homeless in Chicago and to question general assumptions about decentralization.