The previous section reviewed many of the published empirical articles that address the potential impact of homelessness on children. The continuum-of-risk figure (Figure 1-1) is helpful in summarizing various study findings. A rather consistent result across studies is noting elevated problems among homeless and low-income housed children compared to children in the general population. In essence, most studies have documented an apparent negative effect caused by exposure to a common set of “poverty-related” risks. What is less consistent across studies is whether an additional elevation in problems among homeless children as compared to low-income housed children is also found. Moreover, when differences are detected, limitations in methodology (such as not adequately measuring additional risk factors and/or not using multivariate analyses to control for them) call into question whether homelessness, per se, is behind the heightened severity of problems. In other words, it is hard to demarcate where poverty-related sources of risk end and homelessness-specific risks begin.
While the overall pattern of findings across studies does suggest that, more often than not, children’s exposure to homelessness increases their risk of adverse outcomes, it is difficult to make strong and definitive assertions about the impact of homelessness on children due to inconsistent study results. Rather, the effect that homelessness appears to have on children would seem to be dependent on a range of contextual factors and “effect modifiers.” Put simply, whether homelessness has an impact on children may depend. On the other hand, studies are much more consistent in discerning a negative impact of poverty on children (i.e., both low-income housed and homeless) across outcome domains and among different age groups within domains.
The remainder of this section offers some explanations as to why various studies involving homeless children have not been able to reliably produce findings suggestive of a negative impact of homelessness above and beyond the effects of broader poverty-related risks.
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Methodological Differences
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Studies of homeless children have differed in terms of the assessment instruments employed, the degree of statistical power afforded by sample size, selection of comparison groups, enrollment procedures, and other factors. While there are methodological shortcomings in some studies, this probably is not a major reason for the inconsistencies in study findings. For one, some of the more methodologically rigorous studies are internally inconsistent. For example, in the Worcester study, differences were found between homeless and housed children on behavior problems (but only for internalizing problems in school-age children and externalizing problems for preschool children). Infants and toddlers in both groups appeared equivalent and no differences were found on measures of academic achievement among the older children. The Rescorla et al. (1991) study in Philadelphia made the questionable choice of having children in a health clinic serve as the housed comparison group. Yet, the magnitude of problems they assessed in their sample of homeless children was very high and they were likely to have found statistically significant differences between this group and whichever comparison group they might have selected.
Pointing out methodological differences between studies (or problems within studies) yields an uncompelling argument for why studies of homeless children paint such a confusing picture as to the impact of homelessness on children. Rather, inconsistencies across these studies may have more to do with the fact that these investigations have involved different study groups in different communities at different points in time during the fast changing history of family homelessness in America. These other factors, which are largely outside the realm of what is described in an article’s methodology section, are discussed in the pages to follow.
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Historical Factors
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The early studies of homeless children took place in contexts in which the problem of family homelessness had recently emerged and where communities had not had sufficient time nor had marshaled adequate resources to address the needs of this new homeless subgroup. While difficult to document, it is likely that shelter conditions for families have improved in most cities between the mid-1980s and mid-1990s. What a typical child who was homeless in Washington, DC, in 1985 experienced versus what a child who was homeless in Worcester, Massachusetts, encountered in 1995 are very likely quite different. The contrast to 1985 is probably even greater now. The Stewart B. McKinney Act, which was passed in the late 1980s, has funneled hundreds of millions of dollars each year to communities to use in improving housing options and services available to homeless single adults, families, and unaccompanied youths. Legal changes and funding to reduce educational obstacles for homeless children could have made a difference in some communities as evidenced by findings in Worcester (Buckner et al., 2001) and more broadly (Anderson et al., 1995). It is safe to say that, were it not for Federal, state, and local funding to address the needs of homeless individuals and families, their plight would clearly be much worse.
One can make a bit more sense out of the inconsistencies across studies of homeless children by recognizing that the time span between some of these investigations was long enough that what investigators were observing in the later studies entailed a much greater societal response to the issue of homelessness that what the earliest studies had witnessed. For instance, it is probable that the “null” findings regarding school and education-related outcomes for homeless children in Worcester in the mid-1990s (Buckner et al., 2001) would not have emerged had the same investigation in the same city been conducted a decade earlier, before implementation of the McKinney Act and other responses, which began to rectify difficulties that homeless children were having in attending school.
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Contextual and Policy-related Factors
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Across communities at any given moment, the extent of structural imbalance between the supply of affordable housing and its demand will vary with some areas having greater disequilibrium between the supply of housing and demand than others. Likewise, within any given community over time, the degree of structural imbalance is not static but in a state of flux. For instance, Massachusetts, like many other regions of the United States, has had a shortage of affordable housing for many years and this structural imbalance between supply and demand has worsened over the past 10 years. Evidence of this has been increased length of time on waiting lists for eligible households to receive Section 8 housing assistance and longer average duration of shelter stays before families can secure permanent housing (U.S. Conference of Mayors, 2001). Interestingly, it is quite possible that changes in this structural imbalance, for better or for worse, may have ramifications for what researchers uncover at the individual-level among homeless individuals and families. How could this be so?
In understanding the root causes of homelessness, it is important to differentiate between a structural imbalance in the supply and demand for housing, which is the fundamental cause of homelessness, from individual-level vulnerability factors. As a structural imbalance emerges within a locale, such that there is a shortage of affordable housing, it is those who are least able to “compete” who are first to become homeless. Such persons may have multiple vulnerability factors so that, compared to a broader group of persons at risk, they are the least competitive (Buckner, 1991; Buckner, Bassuk, and Zima, 1993; Shinn, 1992). For instance, among families, where caring for children in and of itself leaves adults more vulnerable to homelessness, this could include having health, mental health, or substance use problems as additional risk factors. As the structural imbalance progresses, those who become homeless next will have fewer vulnerabilities than the earliest victims. In other words, when a community begins to encounter a lack of affordable housing appropriate for families, it will be the most vulnerable families who become homeless first. If the problem worsens over time, those families who become homeless thereafter will increasingly look less susceptible compared to the first entrants into homelessness.
The implication this has for homelessness research is that, all other things being equal, in a gradually worsening housing market, early studies may reveal greater problems among shelter residents (adults and children) than do later studies. The rationale being that a gradually tightening housing market “selects” out those families first with the most vulnerabilities (i.e., least ability to compete successfully for housing) followed by families with fewer vulnerabilities. Over time, early disparities between homeless and low-income housed families would tend to lessen. Hence, a comparative study conducted shortly after a structural imbalance in the supply and demand for housing emerges may end up seeing starker differences between the homeless and housed group (e.g., more ADM disorders with the mother). However, these may be factors that entered into the selection process for which families became homeless. If these factors also have a role in influencing a children’s mental health (or other aspect of child functioning) then it may appear as though housing status is the reason for heightened problems among children, when in fact the association is not a causal one. For this reason, it is important to measure other factors that can influence a child’s mental health (or other relevant outcome) so as to make a clearer determination about the specific contribution of housing status (i.e., homelessness) to such outcomes.
Housing assistance policy is another area that could change the complexion of sheltered homeless families over time. If housing policy is such that being homeless reduces a family’s wait for a Section 8 housing certificate/voucher or some other form of housing assistance, then some families may decide it is worth it in the long run to seek admittance to a family shelter. A situation then arises where homelessness is not something that is avoided by all. Should a modest proportion of families in shelter be there as a matter of “choice” rather than necessity, a comparison of homeless to low-income housed families would most likely reveal fewer differences than if all families in shelter were in shelter unwillingly.14
Conceivably, some of these contextual and/or housing policy-related factors could have played a role in accounting for different results between Ellen Bassuk’s and colleagues study of homeless and housed families in Boston during the 1980s (Bassuk and Rosenberg, 1988; Bassuk and Rosenberg, 1990) and a similar but more comprehensive investigation of homeless and housed mothers in Worcester that she led 8 or so years later (Bassuk, Weinreb, Buckner, Browne, Salomon, and Bassuk, 1996; Bassuk, Buckner, Weinreb, Dawson, Browne, and Perloff, 1997; Bassuk, Buckner, Bassuk, and Perloff, 1998). In the earlier study, homeless mothers had greater difficulties than a comparison group of low-income mothers on a range of factors, including history of abuse in childhood and adulthood, greater psychiatric problems, and less supportive social networks (Bassuk and Rosenberg, 1998). In contrast, in the Worcester study, the two groups were quite similar across many different measures, including abuse histories, alcohol, drug, and mental health problems, health conditions, and social networks. In fact, the two groups were similar enough on so many different dimensions, especially histories of violent victimization and mental health problems, that it was almost as if they had been sampled from the same population. Conceivably, this contrast in study findings between Boston in the 1980s and Worcester in the 1990s is partly explained by a gradual worsening of the housing market in Massachusetts. Or perhaps housing policy shifted appreciably such that more low-income families were entering shelter to accelerate receiving housing assistance. Either way, what was observed in mothers in each of the two studies likely related to what was assessed in their children. In other words, the greater differences between homeless and housed children in the Boston study as reported by Bassuk and Rosenberg (1990) as compared to the Worcester study (Bassuk et al., 1997; Buckner and Bassuk, 1997; Garcia Coll et al., 1998; Buckner et al., 1997) could have partly been a function of there being more troubled families in the Boston homeless sample than the Worcester homeless sample.
While the above discussion is somewhat speculative, there are compelling reasons to warrant researchers taking a step back and evaluating possible contextual and/or policy-related factors that may play a role in study findings of homeless individuals and families. This is not to argue that differences in contextual or policy factors explain all the inconsistencies seen across the different investigations of homeless children (and families), but that they could account for some portion of the variability in results.
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Homelessness is Not a Homogenous Experience
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It is important to recognize that people experience homelessness in many different ways. For example, if one were to examine the residential histories of those children (or adults) who are homeless across the United States on any given night, one would find that a number of different circumstances have led to their present situation. Likewise, the ultimate pathways they shall take out of homelessness will vary as well. While homeless, these children will experience different durations of shelter stay, the conditions of shelters will vary both within and across cities, and shelter rules will be quite different. For instance, a few shelters require a family to leave during the daytime while others do not force such a requirement (U.S. Conference of Mayors, 2001). As such, homelessness is not a homogenous experience for children and it can be challenging to make generalized statements about the impact of “homelessness” on children because “homelessness” is not the same thing for all those who experience it. This can be the case as well for other stressful events, but there may be an especially high degree of variation in what homeless children encounter, both within and across locales and time periods.
Shelter conditions are probably an especially important factor in moderating the impact of homelessness for a child. Yet, previous investigations involving homeless children have not sought to measure attributes of a shelter or ecological indices to see if they relate to child outcome. No doubt this would be a challenging task and most studies have not had enough contrast in shelters from which families were enrolled to examine such issues. Nonetheless, it stands to reason that there are important qualities to shelters that may worsen or buffer a child’s experience while living there. These could include the amount of privacy accorded to families, the crowdedness of the facility, the extent to which rules are strictly enforced, the warmth of shelter staff, the size of the facility, its location, and whether families are asked to leave during the day or can remain on the premises.
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Shelter as an Intervention
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On the surface, a shelter stay may seem like a negative experience for a child in a low-income, but as Bassuk and Rosenberg (1990) remarked, “for some children, their stays in a neighborhood-based family shelter have been the most stable and predictable experiences of their young lives (p.261).” In fact, a stay in a family shelter (especially if it is neighborhood based and not a barrack-like shelter or a motel) accords some families the opportunity to receive assistance from case management staff in applying for assistance programs for which they may be eligible as well as referrals to professionals for treatment of one sort or another. As a general rule, the staffs of family shelters have good intentions and, over time, shelter staffs aim to improve their programs and be more responsive to their guests. Hence, some shelters may be providing useful assistance to families, thereby ameliorating other factors that can have a negative impact. In contrast, low-income families who have never been homeless can sometimes be quite isolated and far removed from a range of services and treatment programs that may be beneficial. The implication for research on the impact of homelessness on children is that a shelter stay is not always a negative event for a child. Were it the case in studies that homeless children had been literally without shelter (e.g., living in a car or in campgrounds), than the contrast in living conditions would be much more striking than is sometimes the case. In reality, studies that compare sheltered homeless versus low-income housed children are dealing with a much more complex underlying set of residential circumstances in the lives of each group of children than is generally appreciated. Said differently, the living conditions of children living in shelter are not always as bad as they might seem while the conditions of children in low-income housed settings can be much worse than imagined.
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Similarities Between Homeless and Low-income Housed Children
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As stated at the beginning of this section, it seems easier to discern a poverty-related effect in studies of homeless and low-income children than a homelessness-specific effect. A simple explanation is that both groups tend to differ far more from children in the general population, in terms of exposure to risk factors detrimental to various measures of outcomes than they do to one another. Despite differences in current housing status, homeless children and low-income housed children have more similarities than differences in what they have been exposed to. Even on housing status, it is important to note that homelessness is a temporary state through which people pass, not a permanent trait emanating from individual deficits (Shinn, 1997).15 Also, the living conditions of housed low-income children can be quite decrepit thereby attenuating the contrast between them and children who are living in shelter.
Children from low-income families, whether homeless or housed, face an array of chronic strains and acute negative life events that stem from the broader conditions of poverty.16 These adversities may loom large over the specific detrimental effects that homelessness can have on a child (especially when looked at over the long term). In other words, problems attributable to poverty-related stressors may be much greater than those that are homelessness specific. When viewed in the context of a much broader range of adversities, it is apparent that homelessness is but one of many stressors that children living in poverty all too frequently encounter. For most children, homelessness as a stressful event, may rank somewhere in the moderate range in terms of severity. It has the potential to be more stressful than many experiences, but not to the degree that some events hold, such as witnessing or being the victim of abuse or violence; events that are not uniquely experienced by children when homeless.
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