In the Midst of Plenty. Marybeth Shinn

single adults are in fact parents of minor children from whom they have been separated, and the same may be true of people experiencing unsheltered homelessness. In one large national study of people experiencing homelessness conducted in 1996, 47% of the people surveyed reported that they had minor children, but only 15% had a child with them during the episode of homelessness. One third of mothers were separated from all of their minor children (Burt et al., 1999).

In the more recent Family Options Study, a large experiment that enrolled 2,282 families with children 15 or under from 57 homeless shelters in 12 sites,⁷ all families had a child with them, but 24% also had a minor child living elsewhere. The vast majority of these separations were informal; less than 1% of respondents reported that a child was in foster care. Over a quarter of families (27%) were headed by a couple, with both partners together in the shelter, but another 10% had a spouse or partner somewhere else (Gubits et al., 2015; Walton, Dunton, & Groves, 2017).

      The separation of families is the first example of several we will cite about how demographic and other characteristics of people who are observed during an episode of homelessness may reflect the experience of homelessness and the programs communities use to address it. In in‐depth interviews with a subsample of 80 families in the Family Options Study, some parents reported separating from some children to spare them from shelter conditions (often after they had entered shelter together) although they most often described economic hardship as the reason for the separation, like this mother interviewed in Alameda County, California:

At the time I was pregnant, and we were living in motels. I found myself getting broke. We were eating fast foods. I got paid from my job and I called their dad, and I said, “[Ex‐Partner], I love my boys, I know you love them too, but I need help right now.” We met and he took the boys… I didn't have a refrigerator or nothing like that, so I don't want my boys to—it was beginning to be too much.⁸

Data for the entire sample show that only about a fifth of separations from children occurred around the time of a shelter entry; most separations happened well before (sometimes during episodes of precarious housing that would be counted as homeless under the broader Department of Education definition), and additional separations happened afterward (Walton et al., 2017). Mothers described separations from current partners or spouses, in contrast, as related to shelter rules that excluded men or couples that were not legally wed. Rules led to other family separations as well. Shelters were sometimes unable to accommodate all minor children, especially older boys (2 families in the group of 80 with in‐depth interviews), a 20‐year old child who moved back in with his family later, or a three‐generational family where the mother and grandmother each took one child so that both adults would be eligible for a family shelter. Altogether, shelters failed to accommodate 12 of the 80 families in their entirety (Shinn et al., 2015).

      Mothers felt these separations acutely:

      [T]hen I had to move all the stuff out, and there wasn't no help at the time, because it was just a shelter for women and children. He wasn't with me at the time. He was staying with his mom trying to situate stuff, so it was like—if he was here, it would be so much easier, but they didn't allow that.

Shelter policies and programs also shape patterns of homelessness for people who go to shelters. A study of family shelter users in New York City, Philadelphia, Columbus OH, and the State of Massachusetts found that the majority of people had just one fairly short stay, but “fairly short” ranged from episodes of 30 days in Columbus to 131 days in New York. About a fifth have long episodes, ranging from 144 days in Columbus to 467 days in New York. A small group (2–8%) had multiple brief episodes—these families were also more likely to use psychiatric and substance abuse service systems (Culhane, Metraux, Park, Schretzman, & Valente, 2007). Average stays three times as long in New York as in Columbus are unlikely to result from different characteristics of families in the two cities. In the Massachusetts sample, no one had more than two episodes, and no one with a long stay had more than one in the 2‐year observation period, because families usually are not permitted to return to Massachusetts shelters within a year of leaving them (Bourquin, 2015). Even relatively sophisticated researchers sometimes confuse patterns engendered by policies with characteristics of people.⁹

      Adults on Their Own

      Nationally, almost two‐thirds (65%) of people who use shelters at some time over the course of a year are individuals—that is, adults without children with them. Similarly, 67% of people homeless on a particular night are individuals, but this includes unsheltered people, 90% of whom are not part of a family with children. Only 54% of those using shelters on a particular night are individuals (Henry, Bishop, et al., 2018; Henry, Mahathey, et al., 2018).

Most of those considered individuals are by themselves—less than 3% of those who use shelters do so together with another adult. Again, this is partly, although certainly not entirely, a consequence of shelter policies. We have already noted that men may be excluded from family shelters, and there are relatively few locales where childless couples or childless families with other configurations can be accommodated together. In Nashville's 2019 PIT count, for example, over 30% of the 236 unsheltered people interviewed reported that they were homeless with someone else on the night of the count—half with a spouse or partner and the remainder with other relatives, including adult children, and friends (Bernard, 2019). The ability to live with a loved one, or even a beloved pet, is a reason some people stay on the streets.

      The national data show that individuals use shelters for only short periods of time, a median of 22 nights over the most recent 1‐year period (Henry, Bishop, et al., 2018). Often, those 22 nights are not continuous but instead are interspersed with periods when the individual is housed (perhaps precariously) or is sleeping rough. Most individuals who use shelters do so only once, and relatively briefly, with brevity often depending on the shelter policies of the jurisdiction where they experience homelessness.

By analyzing shelter records, Culhane and colleagues showed that four‐fifths of individual adults who entered shelters in Philadelphia and New York City stayed briefly (an average of 20 days in Philadelphia and 57 in New York), and most did not return during the 2‐ or 3‐year follow‐up period. The authors dubbed this pattern transitional. The rest were almost evenly divided among people who shuttled in and out of short stays in shelter and a second group with fewer, but longer, episodes. By self‐report and administrative records, the latter two groups had more medical and behavioral health problems (Kuhn & Culhane, 1998).¹⁰ This study was groundbreaking in its demonstration that so many individuals experience homelessness in single, brief episodes. Homelessness is not a permanent trait, but a temporary state that most people pass through before returning to housing (Shinn, 1997).

      People with Chronic Patterns of Homelessness

The transitory nature of shelter use for many people and the extensive use of the shelter system by individuals who stay for long consecutive periods or come back often gave rise to the concept of “chronic” homelessness. HUD defines chronicity not only by the length of literal homelessness but also by the presence of a disability, on the grounds that people who meet both criteria will need housing with ongoing supports. To meet the definition, an individual must have been homeless for at least a year, either continuously or over at least four episodes in the past 3 years,¹¹ and also have a diagnosable substance use disorder, serious mental illness, developmental disability, posttraumatic stress disorder, cognitive impairment resulting from a brain injury, or chronic physical illness or disability (U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, 2015a).

About a quarter (24%) of all individuals experiencing homelessness on a particular night in 2018 had chronic patterns, and almost two‐thirds of them (65%)