Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Women And Homelessness In Massachusetts, Michelle Kahan

Publications from the Center for Women in Politics and Public Policy

Ninety percent of the 1,100 families who utilize the state's shelter system annually are headed by women, as are approximately 20% of the 19,000-29,000 individuals who stay in Massachusetts emergency shelters each year. In total, a minimum of 5,000 women and 2,000 children annually stay in Massachusetts homeless shelters.

These figures do not include over 3,000 women in domestic violence shelter (60% of whom enter shelter with their children), not the 50% of families seeking emergency shelter who are turned away each year. Over a period of three years, women also make up a quarter of Boston's 1,400 street dwellers: …

Transitions At Dta: Homeless Pilot Programs At The Massachusetts Department Of Transitional Assistance (2003-2005), John Mcgah, Amy Carlin

Center for Social Policy Publications

Towards the end of fiscal year 2004, the Massachusetts Department of Transitional Assistance (DTA), the state’s welfare department, initiated eight pilot programs to better serve homeless families, to end the state’s reliance on placing families in hotels/motels, and to enable families living in motels to move into stable housing as quickly as possible. These initiatives were created in reaction to the unacceptably high number of motel placements of homeless families (about 600 in 2003). Motels do provide a needed alternative when emergency shelters are full, but they are a political, fiscal and moral liability. In 2004, DTA, in partnership with …

Partners In Prevention: Community-Wide Homelessness Prevention In Massachusetts And The United States, Donna H. Friedman, John Mcgah, Julia Tripp, Michelle Kahan, Nicole Witherbee, Amy Carlin

Center for Social Policy Publications

A central objective of the Homelessness Prevention Initiative (HPI) is to generate information for state policymakers on viable statewide approaches for investing in homelessness prevention. Therefore, to contextualize the policy relevance of HPI evaluation findings and to add to the strength of recommendations, the evaluation team has systematically explored examples of community-wide homelessness prevention efforts already underway in Massachusetts and in other parts of the country.

We selected communities that met the following criteria:

• The prevention network included an entire county, city, region or state.
• Cross-organizational resource-sharing, policies and interventions were in place.
• The collaboration engaged in primary prevention, that …