Assessing emergency shelter patterns to inform community solutions to homelessness

The goal of this study was to examine individuals’ emergency shelter stay records to gain insight into cycles of homelessness and strategies to end homelessness. We examined over 46 000 records of 4332 unique individuals from six of Victoria, Canada’s adult emergency shelters from May 2010–May 2014. Individuals’ stay records were clustered using the k-means cluster analysis, based on total days stayed and total number of episodes of homelessness over the four-year period. Consistent with other Canadian cities, three significant clusters emerged from the analysis: temporary, episodic and long stay. The episodic and long-stay cluster accounted for more than 50 percent of shelter bed nights. Age and gender were analyzed, with seniors more likely to be represented in the long-stay cluster. These findings highlight the need for prevention and rapid re-housing initiatives for those experiencing temporary shelter use, and housing with intensive supports for those in the episodic and long-stay clusters.     

Emergency homeless shelter use in the Dublin region 2012–2016: Utilizing a cluster analysis of administrative data

Arising out of a decade of economic recession and austerity, Ireland is currently in the grip of a severe housing crisis marked by weak housing supply, rapidly rising house prices and rents and a dramatic increase in homelessness that is placing severe pressure on the State's emergency accommodation system. This article utilises data from a national homelessness services database (PASS system), which captures live information on service user interactions for all state funded NGO and local authority homeless services, to examine the patterns of emergency accommodation use by the homeless population in Dublin City. The paper applies a k-means cluster analysis to determine different subgroups of Dublin's homeless population (n = 12,734) and analyses their rate of movement through homeless services between the years 2012 and 2016. A temporary cluster (78%) experienced a small number of homeless episodes for relatively short periods of time, while an episodic cluster (10%) experienced multiple homeless episodes also for a short period of time. The chronic cluster (12%) experienced a small number of homeless episodes but with long stays in emergency shelter. Results for Ireland show patterns similar to those reported in the US, Canada and Denmark, where a small number of chronic users of homeless accommodation account for a disproportionately large share of resources (i.e. 50% of total bed nights). The findings have implications for the operation of emergency homeless accommodation in Ireland and, in particular, the targeting of interventions and the re-directing of resources away from emergency accommodation responses towards a more effective emergency accommodation system for all stakeholders.     

Testing a Typology of Homelessness Across Welfare Regimes: Shelter Use in Denmark and the USA

This article compares patterns of homeless shelter use in Denmark and the USA. Combining data from homeless shelters in Denmark with population registers, we find that the prevalence of shelter use is substantially lower in Denmark than in the USA. A cluster analysis of shelter stays identifies three types of users similar to findings from US research: the transitionally, episodically and chronically homeless. However, the transitionally homeless in Denmark have a higher tendency of suffering from mental illness and substance abuse than the transitionally homeless in the USA. The results support Stephens and Fitzpatrick' hypothesis that countries with more extensive welfare systems and lower levels of poverty have lower levels of homelessness, mainly amongst those with complex support needs, whereas in countries with less extensive welfare systems homelessness affects broader groups and is more widely associated with poverty and housing affordability problems.     

Publications Received

Problem: At present, homelessness in the United States is primarily addressed by providing emergency and transitional shelter facilities. These programs do not directly address the causes of homelessness, and residents are exposed to victimization and trauma during stays. We need an alternative that is more humane, as well as more cost-efficient and effective at achieving outcomes.

Purpose: This article uses research on homelessness to devise alternative forms of emergency assistance that could reduce the prevalence and/or duration of episodes of homelessness and much of the need for emergency shelter.

Methods: We review analyses of shelter utilization patterns to identify subgroups of homeless single adults and families with minor children, and propose alternative program models aimed at the particular situations of each of these subgroups.

Results and conclusions: We argue that it would be both more efficient and more humane to reallocate resources currently devoted to shelters. We propose the development of community-based programs that instead would focus on helping those with housing emergencies to remain housed or to quickly return to housing, and be served by mainstream social welfare programs. We advocate providing shelter on a limited basis and reserving transitional housing for individuals recently discharged from institutions. Chronic homelessness should be addressed by permanent supportive housing.

Takeaway for practice: Changing existing shelter-based responses to homeessness could produce better outcomes for homeless individuals and families.

Research support: None.     

Counting the homeless in Malta

There are no visible signs of homelessness in Malta similar to what can be seen on the streets of many North American or European cities, yet there are few hundred homeless who stay in shelters and another few thousand households that are at risk of being homeless. Malta has a comparatively sizeable social housing sector (9000–10,000) and approximately 3300 households on its waiting list. There is, however, no official recognition of homelessness, no definition and thus, no program to alleviate the problem—the problem is hidden under the façade of strong family ties, community cohesion and the benevolent state. This paper has two major objectives: (1) an attempt to define and suggest a framework in counting the homeless in Malta; (2) identify and examine major contributing factors to homelessness in Malta. Although the study suggests some contributing factors, the task of establishing causal relationships between possible sources of homelessness and actual homelessness is outside the scope of this preliminary study. This study concerns only with the section of the larger homeless spectrum, namely those who stay in temporary shelters. The article indicates general features, interpreting from the existing information, which is indicative rather than conclusive. In addition to information collected from government and non-governmental institutions, the study benefits from data collected through in-depth interviews from two homeless shelters. Although, the quantitative data is small and more cases would be needed to give an appropriate overview, it is hoped that the two issues that are identified (domestic violence and children in homes) would generate discussion. Furthermore, it is hoped that the ideas of “spectrum” and segmentation can be shown to be useful in facilitating collection of data and identification of possible sources of homelessness in Malta and in other culturally similar EU countries. The result of the small sample puts forward some issues and raises some others regarding the change in traditional family structure, the role of the state and how public policy is formed, particularly in Malta.     

Factors that Influence the Outcomes of Single Homeless People's Rehousing

This paper examines the influences of biographical, behavioural, housing and neighbourhood attributes on housing satisfaction, settledness and tenancy sustainment for 400 single homeless people who were resettled into independent accommodation. It draws on evidence from FOR-HOME, a longitudinal study in London and three provincial English cities of resettlement outcomes over 18 months. There was a high rate of tenancy sustainment: after 15/18 months, 78 per cent of the participants were in their original tenancy, 7 per cent had moved to another tenancy and only 15 per cent no longer had a tenancy. Tenure greatly influenced tenancy sustainment, with moves into private-rented accommodation having the lowest rate of success. Several housing and neighbourhood characteristics had strong associations with the outcomes. The biographical and behavioural attributes that were influential in determining outcomes were being young, frequent family contacts, having been in care as a child and some features of the recent episode of homelessness.     

(Turning Rust into Gold?) Hamilton,Ontario and a Canadian perspective of shrinking and declining cities

Hamilton, Ontario, like many cities heavily dependent on manufacturing in the 20th century, experienced de-industrialization and associated change in its economic and employment fortunes, as well as comparative weakened fiscal strength. In contrast to cities in the United States though, Hamilton's population kept growing, at least slowly, and its unemployment rate never skyrocketed, even though the proportion of the population earning middle- to high-incomes declined for a time. In urban scholarship, dramatic population loss has attracted researchers to study shrinking cities, however population change fails to tell the entire story of the possible fates of rust-belt cities that also requires the analysis of economic changes. Our aim is to identify Hamilton's challenges and characteristics followed by how current political, financial and regional circumstances shape the city's development and create different circumstances for post-industrial cities. We review this using Hamilton's census data since 1951 and fiscal data, development projects, and interviews with local public officials and private business reveals the significant impact the post-industrial era and the Canadian perspective. Our findings suggest that despite differences between shrinking characteristics in Canadian and US cities, Canadian cities should receive more attention and offer a different perspective on the “rust-belt” literature.     

The Causes of Homelessness Among Older People in England

A comparative study of the causes of new episodes of homelessness among people aged 50 years and over has been undertaken in Boston, Massachusetts, Melbourne, Australia and four English cities. This paper presents the findings from England, where information was collected from 131 respondents and their key-workers about the circumstances and problems that contributed to homelessness. Two-thirds of the respondents had never been homeless before. The many reasons why they became homeless involved interactions between personal disadvantages and weaknesses, negative events and inadequate welfare support services. For some, their behaviour rather than external factors triggered homelessness. Other cases involved deficiencies with the administration of services and social security payments, the failure or limitations of agencies to detect and respond effectively to vulnerability, and poor collaboration or information co-ordination among housing providers and welfare agencies.     

Energy budgets for office buildings?

To study the feasibility of devising energy performance codes – energy budgets – for office buildings, a major Canadian research project monitored the performance of existing buildings to verify a computer programme, which then provided a model for testing the effect on energy consumption of independent variables. The results showed that building height is far more important than size, and that shape and climatic location can be allowed for in relatively simple formulae. The knowledge thus gained, when applied to calculate the effect of better energysaving measures for the office blocks chosen, indicated potential savings of 44–50 per cent with little capital cost.     

Testing the static and dynamic performance of statistical methods for the detection of national industrial clusters

This paper proposes a new framework to test the static and dynamic performance of clustering techniques for the detection of national industrial clusters. Principal component analysis (PCA), latent profile analysis (LPA), Louvain community detection algorithm (Louvain), and fuzzy analysis clustering (Fuzzy) are compared. It also proposes a Penalized Dunn Index as a novel metric for assessing the quality of industrial cluster dynamics. The findings indicate that PCA results in large variations in the total number of clusters among countries, but industrial clusters are not consistent over time. LPA and Fuzzy algorithms perform well in the case of static datasets, whereas Louvain offers a good balance between cluster diversity and dynamic consistency.     

城镇密集地区与城镇群规划——实践与认知

基于中国城市规划设计研究院近年的规划实践和笔者参与这些工作过程中的思考,首先分析了中国城镇密集地区的类型、形成机制,以及在规划实践中对这些地区的认识,将中国的城镇群划大致划分成五种类型,即珠三角、长三角、京津冀、以省会为中心的城镇群、中小城市城镇密集发展形成的城镇群地区等.随后对城镇群和城镇群规划问题做一些探讨.认为城镇群规划关注的主要问题仍然是两个方面.一是促进职能提升,使城镇群成为引领区域发展的极核和发动机,保持健康的发展速度;二是促进模式转变,降低城镇群发展的资源环境影响,推动城乡、区域、社会、文化与经济协调发展,城市安全和区域安全是城镇群规划的重要出发点.城镇群规划必须把握的技术方法要点是一定处理好规划编制与实施的政府事权关系.空间类型和结构分区.区域意义的城市、角色、地位识别战略性节点地区识别.区域与城际交通系统.独特的自然和人文资源保护,并发挥规划师对战略问题认识的独特优势.     

Post mortem changes of the elemental composition of autopsy specimens: Variations of K,Na, Mg,Ca, Cl,Fe, Zn,Cu, Mn and Rb in rat liver

Retaining the liver inside the intact dead body for different periods of time at ambient temperature induced significant differences in its weight due to post mortem tissue degeneration. Livers from animals that were frozen at ?15°C also showed significant decrease in weight upon thawing on the third day. The effect of these changes on the concentrations of various elements was reflected differently depending upon the association of the elements with extracellular fluids and intracellular components. Thus, concentration of K was more affected by the lysis of the cell and sustained losses up to 30 per cent in relation to the control values, while the total content was reduced by more than 40 per cent as a result of both lysis and partial liquefaction. For Na, differences ranging from +10 to ?20 per cent in concentrations, and +20 to ?40 per cent in total content were observed which could be explained by fluid movements in and out of the organ. Mg and Cl essentially resembled K and Na, respectively. Ca concentration from the animals exposed to ambient temperature was unpredictable due to its mobilization from the decaying residual food in the GI-Tract. Among the trace elements, variations observed for Fe ranged from ?20 and +40 per cent, while both Cu and Zn were found to fluctuate between ?20 and +20 per cent. The loss observed in the total content in liver for the 5 trace elements studied (Cu, Fe, Mn, Rb and Zn) was found to be about 20 to 40 per cent. Rinsing of the liver samples with distilled water depleted the electrolyte concentration up to 30 per cent. Among the trace elements, while Cu, Fe and Zn were relatively unaffected, the losses were up to 20 per cent both for Mn and Rb. It is concluded that livers autopsied on different days are apt to introduce serious systematic errors and that, it is very important to standardize the sampling time for autopsy cases.     

Creative Multiplicities: Urban Morphologies of Creative Clustering

While the geography of ‘creative cities’ is widely explored, the urban morphology of creative clustering within cities is relatively ignored. This paper excavates the morphological properties and capacities of creative clustering through Australian case studies with a series of mappings informed by assemblage theory. Such clusters are characterized by synergies that emerge from a ‘mix of mixes’—a mixed morphology linked to a multiplicity of functions (production, exchange, reproduction, recreation) and socio-economic mix. The ‘buzz’ or ‘atmosphere’ of a creative cluster is the emergent effect produced through an intensive co-functioning of people, practices, identities, spaces and built forms.     

The city and high-tech startups: The spatial organization of Schumpeterian entrepreneurship

Research on Schumpeterian entrepreneurship identifies new high-growth startup companies as key factors in technological innovation and economic growth. While economists have tended to focus on high-growth, high-tech startup firms as the unit of analysis, economic geographers and urbanists have examined the geographic dimensions of entrepreneurship, particularly the rise of entrepreneurial clusters and eco systems. We focus here on a particular type of Schumpeterian entrepreneurship associated with high-tech startup companies, or what we refer to as “tech-startup entrepreneurship.” We contend that the organization of such Schumpeterian entrepreneurship occurs at two spatial scales. At the macro-geographic level, it is highly clustered and concentrated in a relatively small number of global cities or metro areas. At the micro-geographic level, it is highly concentrated in distinct districts or micro-clusters within these leading cities and metro areas. To examine the geographic dimensions of tech-startup entrepreneurship across these spatial scales, we use previously unused data on venture capital-financed startups at the metropolitan and district levels. Our findings support the hypothesis that tech-startup entrepreneurship is organized across two distinct but related spatial scales, which act on entrepreneurial activity through different mechanisms. These findings suggest that local diversity and local specialization can simultaneously potentiate innovation, and that a multi-scalar approach to the geography of entrepreneurship is prudent.     

Marriage-induced homeownership as a driver of housing booms: evidence from Hong Kong

Abstract

Buying a home for marriage is customary in many societies. Traditionally, therefore, young couples getting married is a key driver of demand for homeownership. Yet the idea of marriage-induced demand for homeownership is a relatively underexplored component of housing price change. We examine the role of marriage-induced demand for homeownership in Hong Kong, a relatively self-contained housing market with fewer options for migration than most large cities. We use an instrumental variable strategy to test the hypothesis that more unmarried individuals at the prime age for marriage increases housing prices. We find that an additional one thousand marriage-aged but unmarried individuals leads to a seven per cent increase in housing prices. These findings confirm the importance of demographic factors such as cohort size and marriage rates on housing price projections, housing needs assessments, and housing policy.     

Spatiotemporal patterns of drivers of episodic acidification in Swedish streams and their relationships to hydrometeorological factors

This study examined the spatiotemporal patterns of episodic acidification in 87 weakly buffered streams in Sweden at a monthly sampling frequency during a ten-year study period (1998-2007). Time series of pre-industrial pH (pH₀) were reconstructed from the acidification model Meta_MAGIC, and the acidification impact was defined by the difference between the pH₀ and the contemporary pH (i.e., ΔpH = pH₀ − pH_t). Acidification episodes were defined as observations for which the pH_t was at least 0.4 units lower than average, in combination with a ?pH at least 0.2 units higher than average. Thus, only occasions in which the stream water was both more acidic and more acidified than average were characterized as acidification episodes. For each observed episode, the primary cause was identified from one of the following five possible drivers: dilution, increase in sulfate, nitrate or organic acids, or sea salt deposition. In total, 258 episodes were observed during the study period. The study showed that streams that were acidified during baseflow (ΔpH > 0.4), but not chronically acidic (pH > 5.2), were subjected to regular episodic acidification. Dilution was the single most important cause and the main driver for 58% of the identified episodes. Increases in sulfate concentrations were also relatively common (26% of episodes), whereas increases in nitrate and organic acids as well as sea salt deposition were of minor importance. The total number of dilution-related acidification episodes within a year had a significant (p = 0.005) positive correlation (r = + 0.83) with the average annual precipitation. Occurrences of sulfate episodes were related to droughts during the preceding summers. While the number of streams that are susceptible to episodic acidification will decrease as a consequence of recovery from acidification, the hydrological and meteorological consequences of future climate change may make episodic acidification more common.     

Housing Affordability in Singapore: Can We Move from Public to Private Housing?

With 84 per cent of the Singapore resident population housed in public housing, the ultimate dream for many is to move into private housing, which is generally considered to offer better quality and more exclusive living. This article is concerned with the enabling factors of affordability in housing mobility. It examines the Singapore public housing homeowners' affordability of private housing, suggesting a measure of that affordability. The survey findings indicate that only a small percentage of public homeowners can afford to move to median-priced private apartments. The number is even smaller for the relatively more expensive landed housing with own garden. On a theoretical level, the study demonstrates that the use of multiple methods to measure housing affordability is beneficial as more affordability determinants are included in the measurement.     

Housing Affordability in Singapore: Can We Move from Public to Private Housing?

With 84 per cent of the Singapore resident population housed in public housing, the ultimate dream for many is to move into private housing, which is generally considered to offer better quality and more exclusive living. This article is concerned with the enabling factors of affordability in housing mobility. It examines the Singapore public housing homeowners' affordability of private housing, suggesting a measure of that affordability. The survey findings indicate that only a small percentage of public homeowners can afford to move to median-priced private apartments. The number is even smaller for the relatively more expensive landed housing with own garden. On a theoretical level, the study demonstrates that the use of multiple methods to measure housing affordability is beneficial as more affordability determinants are included in the measurement.     

Neighborhood sociodemographics and change in built infrastructure

While increasing evidence suggests an association between physical infrastructure in neighborhoods and health outcomes, relatively little research examines how neighborhoods change physically over time and how these physical improvements are spatially distributed across populations. This paper describes the change over 25 years (1985–2010) in bicycle lanes, off-road trails, bus transit service and parks, and spatial clusters of changes in these domains relative to neighborhood sociodemographics in four US cities that are diverse in terms of geography, size, and population. Across all four cities we identified increases in bicycle lanes, off-road trails, and bus transit service, with spatial clustering in these changes that related to neighborhood sociodemographics. Overall, we found evidence of positive changes in physical infrastructure commonly identified as supportive of physical activity. However, the patterning of infrastructure change by sociodemographic change encourages attention to the equity in infrastructure improvements across neighborhoods.