Taylor & Francis

Our interest in editing this special issue stemmed from our experiences researching homelessness alleviation projects in Chicago including the Chicago Housing for Health Partnership (CHHP) and Chicago’s city-wide Plan to End Homelessness. CHHP provided homeless individuals with a quick path to permanent, supportive housing upon release from a hospital for chronic physical illness. With an experimental design, it followed those provided with the housing and compared their outcomes to those provided with “usual care”—a referral to a shelter.

Using bivariate and multivariate models, the authors find that individual characteristics are associated with community costs accrued by a sample of individuals who were homeless for one year and then housed for one year (N = 41). Higher pre-Housing First total costs are associated with male gender and those with physical health conditions or physical and mental health conditions combined; post-Housing First, age and disability status dissipate as predictors of total costs.

Why are some parolees more successful in reentering society compared to others? Using a social capital theoretical perspective, we explore the central role housing plays in reentry. Seventy-three semistructured personal interviews were conducted with parolees reentering the community. The authors compared and contrasted the experiences of individuals who were released to secure housing with those who were homeless. Having access to housing facilitates successful reentry by enabling the acquisition, accumulation, and deployment of social capital among ex-offenders.

This mixed-methods study used structured, in-depth interviews to collect data that was analyzed quantitatively as well as qualitatively to explore the long-term housing patterns experienced by low-income families and the ways in which vouchers affect these patterns. Using a life-course theoretical framework and an event history approach, information on past housing, employment, and life circumstances was collected from 30 participants, 17 who had a voucher and 13 on the waiting list to receive one.

Despite their documented successes, permanent supportive housing programs have not received adequate funding at federal or state levels. Building public will to fund permanent supportive housing, therefore, becomes the order of the day. Drawing on the work of the Rhode Island Coalition for the Homeless (RICH), the authors describe how RICH, housing advocates, activists representing the homeless and formerly homeless, and other allies forged an inclusive, multiconstituency network.

Fathers are likely to pay their child support on time when presumptive child support guidelines are used flexibly in response to their specific concerns. Data from 297 court cases assigned to a child support enforcement services agency in New Hampshire were used to determine whether or not the manner in which these guidelines were applied (rigid or flexible) at the time of court action had an effect on fathers' subsequent compliance with their court-ordered child support obligations. An OLS regression found the flexible use of these guidelines to increase compliance.

Welfare reform has swept across the nation. However, before Washington was able to develop a unified front, the state of Michigan was well on the way to reforming its own welfare system. As one of the forerunners in the welfare reform movement, Michigan is clearly a state worth watching. The author highlights major welfare reform efforts in Michigan throughout the 1990s and examines these efforts in light of concerns raised by child welfare advocates across the nation. (author abstract)

This paper analyzes in-depth interviews with 45 frontline welfare workers and clients in one county to explore the perceptions that develop at the front-lines of the welfare system and to consider how these perceptions may influence new welfare reform strategies. This exploratory study finds that welfare workers utilize three distinct typologies to understand their clients. In contrast, clients believe that the welfare system is not designed to help them succeed, that many workers are personally invested in enforcing system rules, and that administrative policy is inconsistently applied.

With the tremendous rise in the United States' incarceration rates over the last four decades, historically high numbers of young African Americans are spending their “emerging adulthood” (as theorized by Arnett) in close contact with the penitentiary. In contrast to the exploration of future possibilities facilitated by academic, military, and professional institutions geared toward people in this life stage, imprisonment typically restricts one's social, occupational, and civic opportunities during and after confinement.

A comparative analysis of different poverty measures, particularly across studies that use different conceptualizations and measurements of poverty, is very valuable. In highlighting this fact, this article compares three poverty measurements: monetary poverty, social exclusion, and capability poverty measurements. The results indicate that all three poverty measurements classify varied proportions of the U.S. population as poor. These variations occur as a function of the conceptualization and measurement of poverty.