How homelessness found a home in social science: History and policy implications

Over the 35-year history of contemporary homelessness in the United States, social science research has been increasingly employed to shape public policy in this arena. While homeless advocates during the 1980s grabbed headlines for organizing demonstrations demanding “housing for all,” a small cadre of social and behavioral health scientists began using sophisticated data collection and analysis techniques to define the contours of homelessness as a social problem. This “evidence-based” approach soon gained political sway, while the influence of the advocates’ “rights based” approach waned. In this presentation, based on analysis of 53 interviews, archival documents, government reports, news reports, and scientific literature, I outline this transformation and its implications. I discuss how politicians and human services leaders came to embrace a person-based typology of homelessness developed by social scientists, which defines subgroups of chronic, episodic, transitionally homeless populations.  Policymakers then selectively utilized this typology to develop programs for “chronically homeless” individuals –those who have been homeless for at least a year or multiple times, often with mental illness or substance use disorders and/or physical injuries - because these individuals were found to be using disproportionate amounts of public resources when not provided housing. I argue that this turn, while successful in addressing the exigent needs of some individuals, has reinforced centuries-old notions of homelessness and its antecedents as rooted in individual pathology rather than in structural problems. It has also fostered neglect of families and individuals who lack a permanent residence but do not fall into the “chronic” category.  Recent news reports have called attention to this wider population, but  the “evidence-based” approach pioneered three decades ago and its selective application have exerted a dominant and ongoing influence on programs to address U.S. homelessness.