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Homelessness is a global challenge.

The United Nations Human Settlements Program estimates that 1.1 billion people live in inadequate housing, and the best data available suggest that more than 100 million people have no housing at all.

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The Canadian Observatory on Homelessness’ Submission to the National Consultation on a Human Rights-Based Approach to Housing
In this report, the Canadian Observatory on Homelessness advocates for a right to housing approach to homelessness in Canada. According to this report, to see an end to homelessness in Canada — and access to safe, affordable housing for all — the Government of Canada must make an explicit, actionable and judiciable commitment to housing as an inalienable human right. To this end, the report goes on to give specific...
Chronic Homelessness: A Research Brief
Dennis Culhane
This fact sheet provides a brief history and current understanding of chronic, episodic, and transitional homelessness. As understanding of homelessness in the United States has evolved, researchers have come to recognize chronic homelessness as a relatively small and “solvable” problem that affects, on average, about 10 to 15 percent of people who experience homelessness. This vulnerable population of people with...
London: Rough Sleeping Plan of Action
Mayor of London
The wide-ranging plan covers rough sleeping prevention, rapid response to rough sleeping, sustainable accommodation, as well as solutions and support to ensure that people on the street can move on with their lives. The plan outlines what the Mayor of London will do now, within his current powers and resources; what could be done with more government investments; and what other changes to structures, legislation or other...
Invisible People - Changing the Story of Homelessness
Invisible People goes beyond the rhetoric, statistics, political debates, and limitations of social services to examine poverty in America via a medium that audiences of all ages can understand, and can’t ignore. The video blog puts into context one of our nation’s most troubling and prevalent issues through personal stories captured by the lens of Mark Horvath – its founder – and brings into focus the pain, hardship and...
Housing in Canada's big cities
This source provides an update on housing affordability and availabity in Calgary, enabling a broader understanding of housing supply trends, gaps and implications and specifically, the current state of the affordable housing segment.  According to this source, Calgary’s housing supply differs substantially from other Canadian cities. Among the major cities in Canada, Calgary has the highest rates of homeownership and single-...
Promising Practices for Serving Philadelphia’s Students Who Experience Homelessness
Family Service Provider Network
This report, Promising Practices, offers a framework to help providers develop and maintain relationships with key personnel in their children’s schools, provide academic support, lower truancy, and improve parental involvement. Authors examine the Education Support Staff Program, evaluating how this model maintains relationships with families and schools to provide support for students experiencing homelessness.
Begging for Change: Begging Restrictions Throughout Washington
Drew Sena and Jocelyn Tillisch
The act of panhandling, commonly known as begging, is a constitutionally protected form of speech.1 But Washington’s cities are increasingly enacting ordinances that criminalize begging. The consequences of criminalizing begging are severe and include violations of First Amendment and due process rights. Indeed, these ordinances often outlaw peaceful and nonintrusive behavior protected by the First Amendment. Some advocates...
Palliative care for homeless people: a systematic review of the concerns, care needs and preferences, and the barriers and facilitators for providing palliative care
Sophie Dongen
Anneke Francke
Hanna Klop
Bregje Onwuteaka-Philipsen
Judith Rietjens
and Anke Veer
Homeless people often suffer from complex and chronic comorbidities, have high rates of morbidity and die at much younger ages than the general population. Due to a complex combination of physical, psychosocial and addiction problems at the end of life, they often have limited access to palliative care. Both the homeless and healthcare providers experience a lot of barriers. Therefore, providing palliative care that fits the...
Seen or Unseen? The Role of Race in Police Contact among Homeless Youth
Jerreed Ivanich and Tara Warner
Homeless youth are at an increased risk of police contact—being stopped by police and arrested, yet it is less clear if this interaction is patterned by race. The current study draws on diverse scholarship to examine three possible effects of race on homeless youths’ interaction with police: that non-White homeless youth are more likely, less likely or no different than White youth to experience police contact. Using the...
Implementing Change: Addressing the Intersections of Juvenile Justice and Youth Homelessness for Young Adults
Lisa Pilinik
et al.
Young adults ages 18-24 require specific, targeted services and interventions from the juvenile justice and homelessness service providers with whom they interact if they are to achieve successful outcomes and avoid long-term harms.  Researchers found that 1 in 10 young adults in the U.S. experience homelessness in a year. This includes many different kinds of experiences, from sleeping outdoors or in emergency shelters to...
Health Crises, Social Support, and Caregiving Practices among Street Children in Bangladesh
Julia Henly and Hasan Reza
An estimated 1–3 million children live on the streets of Dhaka, Bangladesh relying on each other for survival in an environment characterized by illness, violence, and poverty. To understand street children's caregiving practices, this paper draws in part from the informal caregiving and social support literature. The qualitative project purposively selected 75 street children and asked three primary questions: 1) What is the...
Correlates of Treatment Readiness among Formerly Incarcerated Homeless Women
Maria Ekstrand
Yen Le
Adeline Nyamathi
Tanya Oleskowicz
Benissa Salem
Sanghyuk Shin
Katrik Yadav
Treatment readiness is a key predictor of drug treatment completion, rearrest, and recidivism during community reentry; however, limited data exist among homeless female offenders (HFOs). The purpose of this study was to present baseline data from a randomized controlled trial of 130 HFOs who had been released from jail or prison. Over half (60.8%) of HFOs had a treatment readiness score of ≥40. Bivariate analyses revealed...
More than a number: The scale of youth homelessness in the UK
This report examines youth homelessness in the UK. According to research, an estimated 86,000 young people approached their local authorities for help as they were homeless or at risk of homelessness in the UK in 2016/17. The majority (58%) of young people presenting as homeless or at risk of homelessness in England were not recorded as having received positive actions leading to their homelessness being successfully...
Clinical and functional characteristics of young adults living in single room occupancy housing: preliminary findings from a 10-year longitudinal study
Skye Baric
Tari Buchanan
Alasdair Barr
Stephanie Gillingham
Andrea Jones
Olga leonova
Steve Mathias
William Panenka
Matt Piercy
Ric Procyshyn
Geoffrey Smith
Alexander Rauscher
Fidel Vila-Rodriguez
Alexandra Vertinsky
Melissa Woodward
Young adults living in single room occupancy (SRO) hotels, a form of low-income housing, are known to have complex health and substance problems compared to their peers in the general population. The objective of this study is to comprehensively describe the mental, physical, and social health profile of young adults living in SROs. This study reports baseline data from young adults aged 18–29 years, as part of a prospective...
Mental Health & Addiction Interventions for Youth Experiencing Homelessness: Practical Strategies for Front-line Providers
The book contains four sections covering a range of topics that service providers inquire about most often. Part 1: Approaches and Interventions describes specific approaches to addressing the mental health and substance use challenges of youth experiencing homelessness. Topics include the community reinforcement approach and motivational enhancement therapy, dialectical behaviour therapy, mindfulness approaches,...
Temporary Accommodation in Scotland: Interim Report
Mandy Littlewood
Beth Watts
Janice Blenkinsopp
The overall aim of the study is to provide a comprehensive analysis of the current situation, including key stakeholder and temporary accommodation resident perspectives, to inform future policy development. This interim report details emerging findings from the initial stages of the study, these being: a review of existing research and literature; qualitative interview with 16 expert key informants; and analysis of national...
Homelessness in the UK: who is most at risk?
Glen Bramley and Suzanne Fitzpatrick
Is the common pressure group and media refrain that ‘we are all two paycheques away from homelessness’ justified by the evidence? Drawing on multivariate analysis of two cross-sectional datasets (the ‘Scottish Household Survey’ and the UK-wide ‘Poverty and Social Exclusion’) Survey and one longitudinal data-set (the ‘British Cohort Study 1970’), this paper provides a systematic account of the social distribution of...
Missed Opportunities: Pregnant and Parenting Youth Experiencing Homelessness in America
Chapin Hall at the University of Chicago
Missed Opportunities: Pregnant and Parenting Youth Experiencing Homelessness in America details the unique challenges faced by young people experiencing homelessness who are pregnant or parenting. The findings suggest that many of the nearly 4.2 million adolescents and young adults in America who experience some type of homelessness during a 12-month period are pregnant or young parents. Many of those young parents are...
The Future of Women’s Refuges: A Vision for the Future, A Voice From the Future
Tillie Prowse
This article in the March 2018 edition of Parity discusses the future of women refugees. Among other things, the author calls for a recognition by politicians, legislators and policy writers that gender inequality is both the core of the problem and the heart of the solution. Advocating for an individualized customer-centric model, Prowse asserts that we must reject the idea that women’s experience of family domestic violence...
We are not all the same: Exploring Difference in Young People’s Experiences of Couch Surfing Versus Sleeping Rough
Rhianon Vichta and Katie Hail-Jares
Recent surveys of young Australians show more young people couch surfing than ever before, although not all classified themselves as homeless. Envisioning couch surfing as a form of extended sleep-over with a friend has contributed to the perception that couch surfing is a secondary and potentially less concerning form of homelessness; or even not a form of youth homelessness at all. While young people couch surfing may...