Although research has documented the majority of homelessness experienced by individuals and families in the US to be transitional rather than chronic, the mechanisms by which some families successfully escape homelessness while other do not remains relatively unclear. To provide more information to this area of inquiry, this study analyzed the transitional nature of homelessness for a sample of families with school-aged children who were homeless under the McKinney-Vento definition. By conducting a survey with over 1000 homeless families with children enrolled in two public school systems in Central Florida, we find that over a quarter of families exit homelessness in less than six months. We compare these families to those that remained homeless to examine the potential importance of demographic differences and other potential barriers to securing housing. Many of the commonly assumed barriers were not significant predictors of continued homelessness; the most salient difference between the groups was income underscoring the importance of employment opportunities for families to allow them to exit homelessness.

Studies of homelessness and health date back to at least the 1970s. The current paper presents a summary on the state of the literature on homelessness and health since the onset of Housing First initiatives. Housing First initiatives represent a change in the previously used model used by social services providers and government agencies from recovery first to housing first, a recognition that homeless people should be housed before contending with other issues such as mental health treatment. Since this time, researchers have pushed research inquiry into areas that were only touched on lightly before. These new areas of research fall generally into that categories of access and utilization, newer demographics, and emerging health concerns. Each of these areas is thoroughly reviewed in the paper. Despite Housing First legislation, homelessness continues to threaten the health of the urban population and will continue to do so as long as it is allowed to persist.

This project studies desistance from substance use and homelessness. In the early 1990s, the New Orleans Homeless Substance Abusers Project (NOHSAP) tested new treatment approaches for homeless substance users. The program ran for three years and enrolled 670 clients. The current project involved finding as many of these individuals as possible and reinterviewing them 25years later. The methodology for this study consists of follow-up interviews with 50 individuals in a variety of settings, including at their homes and in correctional facilities. The principal finding is that stable, successful romantic relationships incline formerly homeless substance abusers to be sober, stably housed, or both. For persons of this description, successful romantic relationships are an important motivator for desistance.

The theory of food deserts is that poor people eat poor diets in part because fresh, healthy food is not accessible in areas where they tend to live. We review evidence from a number of disciplines on various elements of this theory and find it wanting. Access to a car is, for most, a more important consideration than access to a full service supermarket. Moreover, a number of cases are reviewed where full service supermarkets were opened in food deserts, usually with little effect on shopping or eating habits.

The history of applied social research is reviewed. The social sciences generally are a product of the Enlightenment and most of the social sciences originated in applied concerns. Thus, in contrast to the conventional view that the basic science is developed first and then applied to solving certain problems, most of the social sciences developed in the opposite direction: in the effort to understand and solve various social problems (education, crime, poverty, pestilence), the pioneers of the social sciences developed the theories, concepts, and methods that came eventually to comprise the basic disciplines. The history of applied social research is, indeed, the history of the social sciences themselves.

Homeless people are sometimes the perpetrators and quite often the victims of crime and violence. This article reviews the available research on this topic, focusing mainly on studies conducted in the United States. Homeless teens, women, the mentally ill, and the substance-abusive are shown to be especially high-risk subpopulations. Random acts of violence committed against homeless people are evidently on the rise, both in the United States and around the world. Around the world, many communities have responded to the rise in homelessness by criminalizing homeless behaviors. Unfortunately these measures do not assist people in exiting homelessness.

This article presents findings from an exploratory, qualitative examination of an intensive outpatient treatment program for homeless women recovering from substance dependence disorders. Structured interviews of seven current program clients and three graduates of the program were conducted to ascertain how clients maintain their sobriety in addition to meeting the unique challenges of being homeless. Based on these interviews, there are four main concerns discussed: lack of communication between service providers, inconsistency in personnel during recovery, inconsistency in relapse policies, and clients feeling ill prepared to live in the "real world" after program completion.

We are now well into the second decade of the “outcomes” revolution, the increasing expectation on the part of funders that social and human services agencies report on the impacts or outcomes of their programs. It is no longer enough to “do good” poorly; rather, the expectation these days is that the agencies report on program outcomes and the impact they have on the communities they serve. Unfortunately, however sensible such expectations would seem to be, agencies continue to resist, and in some cases sabotage, these more complex reporting requirements. Program outcomes, it turns out, are often difficult for agencies to conceptualize and even more difficult for them to attain. This study explores the sources of agency resistance to outcomes measurement and management through qualitative interviews with directors and staff of eight human service nonprofit agencies and their one common funder in a large southeastern metropolitan area. Along with the usual logistical issues, we find that a lack of communication between agencies and funders about their intended goals leads to frustration on both sides, ultimately making it more difficult to measure community-level impact than it truly needs to be.

Unsheltered or "street" homeless are an under-researched subset of the homeless population although they account for 37% of the total number of homeless people. The current study examines the lives of homeless people who reside in camps in the woods of East Orange County, Florida. Data for this study were collected via five focus groups with a total of 39 unsheltered homeless people. It is clear from this research that unsheltered homeless people have unique needs that differ from those of the sheltered homeless and that social services will need to change many aspects of the way services are provided to address these unique needs.