Research by Author & Topic

Publications by Laudan Y. Aron on Homelessness

The City of Santa Monica occupies a unique place in Los Angeles County as one of the handful of the county's 88 cities to use its own money to fund homeless services. However, unlike other cities that do so, it participates in the larger county process of applying for HUD homeless funding and does not conduct any regular systematic planning around homelessness. Santa Monica wanted an objective, external examination of its system of homeless services, related activities of city government agencies, descriptions of people homeless in Santa Monica, program performance, system costs, and the views and potential contributions of many stakeholders including the business community, general public, local elected officials, religious congregations, and the county and state actors beyond Santa Monica who control many of the resources needed for an effective approach to ending homelessness. This report covers our findings on those issues and many recommendations for future action.

This project identifies and describes seven community-wide approaches to ending chronic street homelessness that are working in cities around the country. Elements that appear to maximize progress include a paradigm shift in the goals and approaches of the homeless assistance network; setting a clear goal of reducing chronic street homelessness; committing to a community-wide level of organization; having leadership and an effective organizational structure; having significant resources from mainstream public agencies that go well beyond homeless-specific funding sources; commitment and support from mayors, city and county councils, and other local elected officials; and having a mechanism to track progress, provide feedback, and support improvements. This report describes these common elements and their role in approaches to reducing chronic street homelessness. Communities just beginning to develop their own plans for reducing chronic homelessness should be able to find illustrative practices and programs that they can learn from and adapt to their own situations.

This study examines new data from the 1996 National Survey of Homeless Assistance Providers and Clients (NSHAPC) with an explicit focus on comparing homeless assistance programs administered by faith-based and secular non-profit organizations. It describes how the two groups compare in terms of specific numbers and types of programs; numbers of program contacts; types of clients and special population focus (battered women, families, runaway youth, people with alcohol, drug or mental health problems, etc.); program administrators' assessments of homeless clients' needs; how clients are referred to/from programs; and how much government funding they receive.

Homelessness has now been on the American policy agenda for close to two decades. In 1989, when the Urban Institute published America's Homeless, by Martha R. Burt and Barbara Cohen, policymakers and the public may have hoped that we could end the crisis relatively quickly. The arrival of the new millenium has not fulfilled that expectation. In this new volume, Helping America's Homeless, Martha Burt and coauthors returns to the problem with the most in-depth analysis of homelessness that has ever been published. Drawing on data from the National Survey of Homeless Assistance Providers and Clients (NSHAPC), and extending their pioneering work, the authors examine every aspect of the issue, from how many homeless people there are, where they are, why they became homeless, to how long their homelessness lasts. They explore the programs that provide assistance to the homeless, and how they are configured within communities of different sizes. Finally, the authors look at how policymakers have approached this problem, and our prospects for solving the crisis in the new millenium.

Even in a booming economy, at least 2.3 million adults and children, or nearly 1 percent of the U.S. population, are likely to experience a spell of homelessness at least once during a year. This likelihood grows to 6.3 percent if one considers only people living in poverty, according to the newest national analysis of homelessness by Urban Institute researchers, Martha Burt and Laudan Aron. At the same time, there is a bigger and more diverse network of homeless services than in 1987, when the Urban Institute released earlier national estimates of the homeless population.

The information in this report is critical to discussions about effective public policy responses needed to break the cycle of homelessness. As such, it provides an important baseline and foundation for future assessments of the nature and extent of homelessness. It also provides a valuable overview that will improve our understanding of the characteristics of homeless people who use services, the nature of homelessness, and how best to address it.