Urban Studies and Planning Commons^™

As this special issue of the journal well reflects, much progress has been made in homelessness research. That progress has been matched with advances in homelessness policy and programming, nearly all of it informed by the contributions of the research community. While the imperatives of policy-making have required decisions to be made with imperfect knowledge, a substantial enough convergence of theory and evidence has enabled policymakers to shift homelessness policy and practice in important ways. Those shifts have also prefigured some of policymakers’ needs from the research community in the future.

Rapidly placing homeless Veterans with severe mental illness into permanent housing is one important goal of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development-Veterans Affairs Supportive Housing (HUD-VASH) program; however, no research has tested whether an explicit organizational alignment of this goal with revised practices could improve outcomes. A demonstration project initiated in 2010 to reform housing placement practices in a metropolitan area enabled researchers to compare an explicit “Housing First” program—offering immediate permanent housing without requiring treatment compliance, abstinence, or “housing readiness”—with a treatment-first program for 177 homeless Veterans. The Housing First initiative successfully reduced time to housing placement, …

Amidst concern about the implications of an aging U.S. population, recent evidence suggests that there is a unique aging trend among the homeless population. Building on this, we use data from New York City and from the last three decennial Census enumerations to assess how the age composition of the homeless population—both single adults and adults in families—has changed over time. Findings show diverging trends in aging patterns for single adults and adults in families over the past 20 years. Among single adults, the bulk of the sheltered population is comprised of persons born during the latter part of the …

Homelessness is currently at a demographic crossroad. This presents a unique opportunity for hastening its demise. In the thirty years since homelessness first manifested itself in American cities in its contemporary form, it has ascended to one of the most prominent American social problems. Despite the current push by advocacy organizations to end homelessness, many expect it will always be with us. In its longevity, however, lies the potential for its decline, provided we do not repeat this cycle with a new generation of homeless.

During recent years, the need to consider effective and innovative ways to prevent and end homelessness among individuals with serious mental illness has been abetted by an increased and more sophisticated understanding of the composition of the homeless population, the emergence of evidence-based practicess to address homelessness, and the passage of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. This article summarizes the evolving understanding of the role that serious mental illness plays in homelessness, as well as the interventions that are effective at preventing and ending homelessness among persons with serious mental illness. This summary contextualizes a discussion of the …