Characteristics of Transitional Housing for Homeless Families

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INTRODUCTION

The concept of transitional housing has a long history in the fields of mental health and corrections, predating its application to the homeless arena by decades. State and local public mental health and corrections departments developed these residential programs to ease the transition back into regular housing for people leaving mental hospitals or prisons. Stevens (2005) describes the history of halfway houses for people leaving correctional settings, and their transition quite recently into community residential centers. To use one state as an example, in 1974 Ohio had 22 certified halfway houses for people leaving prison (Ohio Adult Parole Authority 2005). Policy makers in the mental health arena were also focusing on community-based residential and nonresidential services during the 1970s and early 1980s (Biegel and Naparstek 1982). In 1982 an American Psychiatric Association task force published its report, A Typology of Community Residential Services (APA 1984), which sought to establish a common nomenclature for residential programs serving people with serious mental illness located throughout the country. The task force had spent four years identifying, cataloging, and attempting to classify the many such programs in existence at that time.

These community-based transitional programs were developed for many reasons, including a desire to avoid the high cost of institutional versus community-based care and a desire or legal obligation to maintain some intermediate level of supervision over people being released from institutions. One of the historical motivations for developing transitional community residential settings comes closest to the one driving the growth of transitional housing programs for homeless people. Officials running state agencies and institutions saw people fail in the community and return to institutions when they did not have the skills, connections, or supports that would help them establish themselves independently. Transitional programs were developed to increase the likelihood that those released from institutions would, once reinforced by the learning and development acquired during a period in a transitional program, be able to sustain independent living in the community.

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