NYU Study Says Affordable Housing Is Best Cure For Family Homelessness

Regardless of Social Disorders, 80% Of Formerly Homeless Families With Subsidized Housing Stayed Permanently Housed

New York University researchers, following poor and homeless New Yorkers for five years, found that the main cause of family homelessness is the scarcity of affordable housing. Furthermore, their study found that drug addiction, mental illness and other social problems were not main causes of homelessness among families living in NYC.

A key finding was that regardless of social disorders, 80% of formerly homeless families with subsidized housing stayed stably housed.*

The study’s findings will be published in the November issue of The American Journal of Public Health. The main authors are NYU psychology professor Marybeth Shinn and professor Beth C. Weitzman of NYU’s Wagner Graduate School of Public Service.

Professor Shinn said, “For the last six years, government and private foundations have worked under the assumption that behavioral disorders are the root cause of homelessness and that an individual cannot be stably housed until these disorders have been addressed.

“Our research refutes that assumption. We found that subsidized housing succeeds in curing homelessness among families, regardless of behavioral disorders or other conditions. Whatever their problems – substance abuse, mental illness, physical illness or a history of incarceration – nearly all of the families in our study became stably housed when they received subsidized housing.

Professor Weitzman said, “Our research indicates that homelessness is not a permanent condition. People do get themselves out of the problem. But it only happens when some intervention occurs that provides them with access to the housing market.

“That said, the scariest finding to emerge from our study is the extraordinary number of poor people in New York City who are badly housed and therefore at risk of becoming homeless. For example, we know some 13 percent of families on the city’s welfare caseload don’t have their own apartment and are living doubled up with families. And we know that doubling up – always a fragile social arrangement – often precedes entry into the shelter system. Under these conditions, our results suggest, family homelessness will endure.”

The researchers conducted interviews with 266 homeless families as they requested shelter and with a comparison sample of 298 families selected at random from the welfare caseload. These interviews were conducted in the first half of 1988. Respondents were then interviewed again five years later.

The objective was to examine 4 factors -- persistent poverty, behavioral disorders, impoverished social networks and housing conditions -- as predictors of entry into shelter and subsequent housing stability.

The main findings of the NYU study are as follows:

Homelessness was a stage that families passed through, not a permanent state: four-fifths of families who entered shelter had their own apartments 5 years later, and three-fifths were in stable housing.

Some 80 percent of the sheltered families that received subsidized housing became stable (that is, they had been living in their own residences for at least the previous 12 months). In contrast, only 18 percent of the families that did not receive subsidized housing were stable by study’s end.

Receipt of subsidized housing depended primarily on waiting in shelter long enough to come to the top of the queue for subsidized housing, and on being assigned to a non-profit shelter that provided relatively extensive housing services. Women who experienced domestic violence were less likely than others to receive subsidized housing.

The housing characteristics that predicted homelessness were widespread in the overall welfare caseload. Thirteen percent of families on the overall welfare caseload in New York City in 1988 were doubled up in somebody else’s apartment. Almost half lived in crowded conditions, with more than 2 people per bedroom. National data also suggest a large pool of ill-housed, poor people. Under these conditions, the researchers suggest, family homelessness will endure.

The ability to identify families at risk of homelessness is not enhanced by examining social factors beyond housing. A main objective of the study was to determine what factors put families at risk of homelessness. To this end, the researchers developed a profile based on housing factors (frequent moves, overcrowding, poor building conditions) and baseline demographic factors (age, ethnicity, etc.) that identified 65% of families requesting shelter by targeting 10% of families on public assistance. When the profile was expanded to include all other factors -- persistent poverty, behavioral disorders, and impoverished social networks -- the percentage of homeless families identified increased to only 66%.

The AJPH article is the product of an ongoing research project at New York University on poor and homeless families in New York City. This project has been funded principally by a grant from the National Institute of Mental Health and by a contract from the New York City Human Resources Administration.

11/01/98