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In any municipality trying to serve and shelter homeless people in the U.S., journalists are likely to find a patchwork, decentralized support system, along with federal dollars being directed by state officials toward local governments and nonprofit organizations.
There is no single model or method for governments to provide services to homeless people, according to the authors of a 2024 analysis published in the Public Administration Review.
That’s because cities and counties across the U.S. differ greatly in terms of climate, geography, general housing affordability and availability, and other factors — each jurisdiction and situation is unique.
These systems are often highly localized. Federal policymakers refer to these local systems that serve homeless people as “continuums of care.” There are 385 of them across the country, according to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.
Continuums of care may include government agencies, nonprofits, law enforcement agencies and faith-based organizations, among others.
Here, we cover recent research on policy frameworks and specific approaches that can improve housing stability for people experiencing homelessness. Learn about:
Journalists new to covering homelessness will need to make connections within public and private organizations, in addition to communities of people experiencing homelessness. And they will need to know about changing federal approaches to reducing homelessness.
While the federal government does not directly manage how local governments address homelessness, it sets national policy priorities and controls vast amounts of money historically disbursed to cities and rural jurisdictions in all corners of the U.S.
President Donald Trump has proposed a budget that would cut half a billion dollars in federal grants aimed at alleviating homelessness, among other cuts that those who serve homeless people argue could hamper those efforts.
“The current administration has advanced consequential actions, including Medicaid cuts, proposed cuts to housing subsidies, dismantling the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness — the very agency dedicated to coordinating the federal homelessness response — and law enforcement targeting of people experiencing homelessness in Washington, D.C.,” write the authors of a September 2025 paper on the current landscape of federal homelessness policy, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
Each year, HUD requires that continuums of care count the number of homeless people in the communities they serve. Some advocates have argued those counts underestimate the size of the nation’s homeless population.
The most recent count available, conducted in January 2024 with results published in a report later that year, found 771,480 people experiencing homelessness, “the highest ever recorded,” according to the report.
Black people in particular are disproportionately affected by homelessness.
“People who identify as Black made up just 12% of the total U.S. population and 21% of the U.S. population living in poverty but were 32% of all people experiencing homelessness,” according to the report.
Researchers note there is no single approach to reduce homelessness. To do so requires a variety of short-term solutions, such as temporary, safe shelters or permanent housing options, and long-term policy changes, such as reducing red tape to encourage the development of affordable housing.
“We essentially make it incredibly difficult to build multifamily housing in most of our cities,” says Katie Einstein, an associate professor of political science at Boston University who studies politics and policies in cities. “As a consequence, we are not building enough housing to meet the demand and so we’re seeing rising prices — and that, in turn, in its most extreme cases, ends up leading to higher rates of homelessness.”
The National Alliance to End Homelessness offers several data dashboards with local information on homeless populations and availability of assistance.
Einstein says it may not be intuitive as to how someone who has been homeless for years would benefit from lower housing costs and more housing supply.
But she encourages thinking about how that person became homeless in the first place. For example, maybe they had a lease but it wasn’t renewed and they couldn’t find another affordable apartment. Or, they fell behind on rent and were evicted.
Then, they ended up homeless, which is “incredibly stressful,” she notes. That stress can potentially lead to mental health issues or substance use, which in turn make it difficult to land a job and obtain housing again.
Having an adequate supply of affordable housing options makes it less likely that cycle will begin.
“One of the most effective ways that we could reduce homelessness is stopping people from becoming homeless in the first place,” she says.
Housing First, Treatment First
“Housing First” and “Treatment First” refer to general approaches that governments and nonprofit service organizations take toward serving people without housing.
Treatment First requires stability on other issues, such as substance use disorder, before someone becomes eligible for independent housing. This approach was popular among homeless service providers and federal policymakers during the 1990s.
“Often, this meant that individuals entered highly regulated, congregate facilities; accessed relevant treatment services while stabilizing in this transitional program; improved in treatment; and became ready for independent, permanent housing,” according to a 2023 HUD report.
By contrast, service providers who take a Housing First approach seek to get homeless people into stable, independent housing while offering services to address concurrent issues — but being eligible for housing doesn’t require treatment.
Prominent advocacy organizations, such as the National Alliance to End Homelessness, favor Housing First. HUD has also in recent years adopted Housing First. The administration of President George W. Bush in 2004 became the first to use Housing First in its national recommendations to reduce homelessness.
The Housing First concept originated in 1992 in New York City with an organization called Pathways to Housing. With federal funding, Pathways offered apartments to 139 chronically homeless people, many of whom remained housed years later.
Recent research suggests the Housing First model offers better odds that homeless people will gain housing stability, compared with Treatment First programs. There are several recent papers that journalists reporting on homelessness should know about.
When compared with treatment first programs, Housing First programs decreased homelessness by nearly 90%, according to a 2020 systematic review of 26 studies on efforts aimed at addressing homelessness across more than 17,000 participants in the U.S. and Canada. The housing first programs operated for a range of time periods, from less than one year to more than two years.
The studies were conducted in urban or suburban areas and focused on homeless people with other diagnoses, such as mental health or substance use disorders. Results were “mixed,” according to the authors, when it came to participants’ alcohol and substance use. But the Housing First programs reduced homelessness by 37% among people with HIV infection, who also saw their viral load go down 22%.
“Housing First programs offer permanent housing with accompanying health and social services, and their clients are able to maintain a home without first being substance-free or in treatment,” the authors write. “Clients in stable housing experienced better quality of life and generally showed reduced hospitalization and emergency department use.”
Another analysis, focusing on four randomized controlled trials conducted between 1992 and 2017 that were published in peer reviewed journals, also found the Housing First model worked best to lower the risk of chronic homelessness among participants, compared with Treatment First and other traditional models. The analysis was published in 2019 in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health.
Research also suggests the housing first approach tends to offer greater economic returns than what it typically costs per person. A 2022 review of 17 peer reviewed and gray literature analyses of Housing First programs in the U.S. found the median cost per person was $16,479 per year, with $18,247 in economic benefits.
(Gray literature is research and analysis conducted outside of the sphere of academic peer review, such as research from nonprofit or governmental organizations.)
The economic benefits were both personal and societal. They included individuals earning more money from being able to get a job, avoiding having to use emergency housing services, avoiding interacting with judicial and police systems, and not needing other public financial assistance.
“Overwhelming evidence from several rigorous studies indicates that Housing First programs increase housing stability and decrease rates of homelessness,” according to the 2023 HUD report. “The best available evidence indicates that Housing First programs successfully house families and individuals with intersecting vulnerabilities, such as veterans, individuals experiencing substance use or mental health issues, survivors of domestic violence, and individuals with chronic medical conditions such as HIV/AIDS.”
While this selection of recent research has identified positive outcomes of a Housing First approach for people experiencing homelessness, it can be a good idea to remind audiences that scientific inquiry is an iterative process and it’s rare for research to definitively conclude that a certain approach is the best in every circumstance.
Further reading
Modeling Health and Economic Outcomes of Providing Stable Housing to Homeless Adults With [Opioid Use Disorder]
Isabelle J. Rao and Margaret L. Brandeau. JAMA Network Open, June 2025.
“I Felt Safe”: The Role of the Rapid Rehousing Program in Supporting the Security of Families Experiencing Homelessness in Salt Lake County, Utah
Ivis Garcia and Keuntae Kim. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, July 2020.
Long range policies: Zoning and land use
Government and academic researchers, such as Gregg Colburn at the University of Washington, author of the book Homelessness is a Housing Problem, have pointed to local housing affordability as a primary driver of homelessness in cities and counties.
“Homelessness is one of the more visible consequences of the nexus of unemployment, poverty, and a lack of affordable housing,” write the authors of a 2018 report on chronic homelessness, published by the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine.
Zoning laws and land use policies can contribute to cities being unable to build needed affordable housing and higher overall housing costs, according to Einstein and Charley Willison, an assistant professor of public health at Cornell University, in their 2024 paper published in Urban Affairs Review. For example, property owners in Portland, Oregon, filed legal challenges in 2022 objecting to a year-round women’s shelter being opened in an area zoned for industrial use, according to reporting from KGW-TV.
Land use planning and zoning are related, but different. Land use plans are often recommendations from a city planning department on how areas of land within the municipality should be used in the future — whether for housing, parks, industry, infrastructure or anything else that would serve communities.
Zoning laws may stem from land use plans. They are passed by local governments and concretely define how land can be used, what can and can’t be built on certain parcels of land, and how those structures must be built. Land use plans do not change zoning, and zoning regulations do not force a property owner to develop their land.
Madison, Wisconsin’s Department of Planning, Community and Economic Development
Einstein and Willison analyzed recent homelessness plans and housing plans from the 100 largest U.S. cities to explore whether city officials tend to think of land use and zoning as tools to reduce homelessness.
“Indeed, plans are, by their very nature, nonbinding, and, at times, aspirational documents,” they write.
Einstein and Willison also conducted nationally representative surveys of mayors from cities with more than 75,000 people. The surveys were conducted in 2021 and 2023 with a total of 230 participants, as part of Boston University’s Menino Survey of Mayors.
“While building more housing alone will not end homelessness, it is an essential component of effective local homelessness policy, both for preventing homelessness and to successfully, permanently house people actively experiencing homelessness,” write Einstein and Willison.
But cities with high levels of unsheltered people were not more apt to consider a lack of affordable housing as a reason for homelessness than cities with low levels of unsheltered people. And a majority of the mayors surveyed did not see housing costs as driving local homelessness.
“There’s a few exceptions, but for the most part, what we see is that cities really aren’t thinking about their broader housing supply when they’re constructing their homelessness policies,” Einstein says.
Einstein and Willison note that shorter-term efforts “immediately responsive to highly visible homelessness” could be more politically viable in situations where property owners use zoning laws to try to block longer-term solutions that could increase housing supply and affordability.
Some states — such as California, Massachusetts, Montana and Oregon — have mandated local governments increase their housing density, allowing more multifamily housing to be built, according to the paper.
“Something that looks like it may be pretty effective is state-level policy action that forces local governments to make it easier to build,” Einstein says. “I think it’s really hard to get local governments to voluntarily make these changes.”
Further reading
From Rejection to Legitimation: Governing the Emergence of Organized Homeless Encampments
Stephen Przybylinski. Urban Affairs Review, March 2023.
Exploring Unsheltered Homelessness, Migration, and Shelter Access in Kentucky
Andrew Sullivan and Kotomi Yokokura. Cityscape: A Journal of Policy Development and Research, 2022.
Encampment sweeps and health consequences for homeless people
In 2019, a federal appeals court ruled that a city enforcing a ban on public encampments would violate the Constitution’s Eighth Amendment prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment — if the city lacked enough shelter beds to house its homeless population.
While there is no single definition of “encampment,” they are usually characterized by large groups of people sleeping outside with some temporary shelter, such as tents.
In June 2024, the Supreme Court reversed the 2019 ruling, allowing jurisdictions to proceed with dismantling homeless encampments without other shelter available.
“The Constitution’s Eighth Amendment serves many important functions, but it does not authorize federal judges to wrest those rights and responsibilities from the American people and in their place dictate this nation’s homelessness policy,” Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote for the 6-3 majority in the case, Grants Pass v. Johnson.
Cities with highly visible homeless encampments, such as San Francisco and Oakland, California, followed by sweeping, or clearing, those encampments.
But sweeps are not new. Well before the recent court actions were numerous examples from decades past of cities clearing areas where homeless people encamp or gather, including in New York City, Santa Ana, California and Sarasota, Florida, among many others.
A small body of recent research focuses on how sweeps affect the mental and physical health of homeless people living in areas that authorities clear.
“Sweeps are actions in which government agencies, often in collaboration with the police department, move [people experiencing homelessness] out of the location where they are sleeping,” write the authors of a March 2022 paper published in the Journal of General Internal Medicine.
Those authors surveyed 39 health care providers in San Francisco, including medical doctors, case managers and community outreach workers, for their perspectives on how sweeps affect the health of people experiencing homelessness.
All providers except one mentioned the psychological toll homeless people face when they lose their belongings, as often happens during sweeps, including sentimental items, food and hygiene products.
Many also noted the loss of medical equipment such as HIV medication and sterile needles, the loss of medication such as buprenorphine to treat opioid use disorder, along with the loss of mobility equipment, such as walkers and wheelchairs.
Losing a stable location also made it generally difficult for homeless people to receive medical care.
“The sweeps make providing healthcare to individuals who live outside very difficult,” one nurse told the authors. “I am unable to find people after they have been moved.”
Sweeps may lead homeless people to turn to emergency departments to make up for their loss of medical equipment, according to the survey. They can also cause stress, anxiety and symptoms of depression among people experiencing homelessness.
“The confrontation, dehumanization, and instability induced by sweeps are traumatic experiences for a community that already has a high trauma load, including a high prevalence of adverse childhood experiences and PTSD,” the authors conclude.
Those themes are reiterated in an August 2024 paper in the journal Public Health Nursing. The author, Megan Doede, is a registered nurse and assistant professor of family and community health at the University of Maryland School of Nursing.
“During these sweeps, local law enforcement disband [people experiencing homelessness] from their living spaces and may also throw away or confiscate their belongings,” Doede writes. “[People experiencing homelessness] who also use drugs may also experience the added burden of fear of arrest related to illegal drug use during these encounters, which are often mediated by the police.”
Doede notes that encampment sweeps in Baltimore have led to a variety of outcomes for people experiencing homelessness. Those included moving to a shelter, going to outreach organizations for help and being lost by health providers who had cared for them.
Finally, the authors of an April 2024 paper in BMC Public Health examined the results of a survey with data on 397 people experiencing homelessness in Denver. They found that homeless people who authorities displaced were more likely to report that they suffered from infectious diseases and poorer mental health.
“While ‘housing for all’ is a laudable goal, such infrastructure takes time,” the authors write. “Our analysis adds to the growing body of literature that suggests that the ‘in the meantime’ approach of displacing people is harmful and, ultimately, worsens public health.”
Further reading
Association of Involuntary Displacement of People Experiencing Homelessness and Crime in Denver, CO: A Spatiotemporal Analysis
Pranav Padmanabhan, et. al. Journal of Urban Health, October 2024.
Encampment Clearings and Transitional Housing: A Qualitative Analysis Of Resident Perspectives
Michael Mayer, et. al. Health Affairs, February 2024.
“The Echoes of Echo Park”: Anti-Homeless Ordinances in Neo-Revanchist Cities
Christopher Giamarino and A. Loukaitou-Sideris. Urban Affairs Review, March 2023.
Without Shelter, People Die: Disproportionate Mortality Among King County’s Homeless Population, 2009-2019
Rachel Scott, et. al. Journal of Social Distress and Homelessness, January 2022.
“I’m No Criminal, I’m Just Homeless”: The Greensboro Homeless Union’s Efforts to Address the Criminalization of Homelessness
Krista Craven, Sonalini Sapra, Justin Harmon and Marcus Hyde. Journal of Community Psychology, July 2021.
Tiny homes as a way to alleviate homelessness
Tiny homes are structures less than 400 square feet in size, according to the International Residential Code, which sets construction rules for new one- and two-family builds across most states. Several cities — including Tallahassee, Florida; Portland, Oregon; Austin, Texas; Syracuse, New York and Detroit — have in recent years allowed the development of tiny home communities aimed at reducing homelessness.
“Tiny homes villages, if designed properly, are an affordable and efficient way to add to the housing supply, providing residents with a community in which to advance their human flourishing as well as obtain shelter,” argues Boston College Law School professor Lisa Alexander in a May 2022 article in Harvard Law & Policy Review. “Tiny homes will not work for every homeless person or in every community. Tiny homes villages should not replace all other forms of shelter for homeless people or all other forms of affordable housing.”
The authors of a January 2020 paper explored successes and challenges of a tiny home community in Tallahassee. They interviewed design consultants and municipal planners along with staff and residents of The Dwellings, a tiny home community founded as part of the Tallahassee-based nonprofit Connecting Everyone to Second Chances, a service and shelter provider for people at risk of or experiencing homelessness.
The researchers asked how the public responded to plans for The Dwellings, along with unexpected challenges and other topics. Residents living near the proposed Dwellings site were concerned their property values would fall. They also expressed quality-of-life concerns, such as more traffic, people gathering on the street and litter.
The Dwellings planners addressed many of those concerns through public meetings, and “the community began to accept the new neighborhood,” the authors write. Local planning regulations around stormwater and drainage increased the overall cost of construction, such as having to build permeable sidewalks that let water flow through them, the authors found.
People living at The Dwellings, who had experienced or were at risk of experiencing homelessness, formed a supportive community.
“Residents and staff shared stories of community members who get up early in the morning and walk each other to their cars, a couple who carpool to pick up groceries, and those who spend time getting to know their neighbors,” the authors write.
Some residents noted mobility concerns, such as that the location of The Dwellings was far from bus transit, making it challenging to get to work — along with a resident who used a wheelchair and had to take a cab when he needed to buy groceries.
Residents paid $600 to $900 per month for their tiny homes at the time the study was conducted, similar to nearby rental market rates. But the rent included a free, on-site medical clinic, dental care, a community center and three daily meals, with one Dwellings housing manager noting an attitude of “benevolence and grace and forgiveness” toward residents having difficulty paying their rent.
“As residents sign a program agreement and have access to a caseworker who helps them develop a plan of success, the likelihood of residents returning to insecure housing seems low,” the authors write, noting more research is needed to track long-term outcomes. “In terms of replication, those involved in The Dwellings development have emphasized the need for flexibility in the design and implementation phases.”
Further reading
The Pendulum Swings: Mobilizing Policies to Develop Mass Homeless Encampments in the “Progressive” City
Stephen Przybylinski. Urban Geography, October 2024.
The Institutionalization of “Tiny Home” Villages in Portland: Innovative Solution to Address Homelessness or Preclusion of Radical Housing Practices?
Antonin Margier. Cities, June 2023.
Population-Level Health Effects of Involuntary Displacement of People Experiencing Unsheltered Homelessness Who Inject Drugs in U.S. Cities
Joshua Barocas, et. al. JAMA, April 2023.
Promoting Safety and Connection During COVID-19: Tiny Homes as an Innovative Response to Homelessness in the USA
Katherine Hoops Calhoun, Jennifer Hope Wilson, Stephanie Chassman and Grace Sasser. Journal of Human Rights and Social Work, June 2022.
Community in Property: Lessons from Tiny Homes Villages
Lisa T. Alexander. Minnesota Law Review, November 2019.
Addressing homelessness among specific populations
There is research examining ways to achieve stable housing situations for specific groups of homeless people, including those who have experienced domestic violence, military veterans and older people.
The following rundown does not represent every subset group of homeless people but rather focuses on groups about whom recent studies are available.
Among other effective strategies, research suggests longer-term housing stability is more likely when unhoused people are quickly sheltered, when there are opportunities for social connections and community building, and when direct grants are offered to individuals that they can use toward housing costs.
Intimate partner violence survivors
The terms “domestic violence” and “intimate partner violence” are sometimes used interchangeably in research and among advocates, but they can have slightly different meanings. Domestic violence implies violence perpetrated against anyone within a family living together, according to the nonprofit advocacy group and service provider Women Against Abuse.
Intimate partner violence usually refers to violence within a romantic relationship, according to the group.
“It’s a nuanced issue, and until the general public begins using a more inclusive term, we have decided to use both phrases interchangeably when we discuss relationship violence,” according to the group.
Researchers often use “intimate partner violence,” though journalists may also encounter the phrase “domestic violence” in academic literature where researchers study violence within romantic relationships.
“Many survivors face financial abuse, in which a partner controls their access to money, employment, or credit, making it difficult to secure stable housing,” according to a March 2025 study from the Bloomberg American Health Initiative at Johns Hopkins University. “Others are forced to leave their homes abruptly to escape violence, often without financial resources or a safe place to go.”
Survivors of intimate partner violence may have few housing options available to them, “which often forces [them] to return to their abuser or to turn to options that offer little, if any, safety,” write the authors of a March 2019 systematic review published in the journal Trauma, Violence & Abuse.
They reviewed data and results from 12 research papers from 1985 to 2017 on interventions serving survivors of intimate partner violence facing housing instability. Shelter was the most common service provided that the studies analyzed, but others included home security measures and direct financial assistance through “flexible funding” programs.
The research the authors consulted suggests shelter services specifically tailored to survivors of intimate partner violence, which often focus on providing temporary shelter in a safe environment, tended to reduce PTSD and such violence in the future — along with offering housing stability and access to other services.
“To foster housing security for [intimate partner violence] survivors, policy makers should support innovative initiatives for organizations that serve survivors,” the authors write. “For example, innovative use of resources, through flexible funding programs, could enable organizations to provide services that can help survivors achieve and maintain housing stability.”
A previous study, published in 2016 in the Journal of Interpersonal Violence, examined a nonprofit flexible funding program in Washington, D.C. that offered money to help domestic violence survivors avoid homelessness — such as by covering back rent, paying for clothes a job required, or replacing a tire on a car that a survivor needs to get to work.
The researchers interviewed 55 survivors one month, three months and then six months after they received flexible funds from the nonprofit.
Most of the survivors were women ages 21 to 57, and 93% of the survivors were Black, of African descent, or multiracial including Black. Roughly two-thirds were at risk of losing their housing and one-third were homeless. Funding averaged $2,000 per grant, with about half of the grants going toward rent.
“In some cases, abusers took rent money from survivors and concealed overdue notices,” the authors write. “In other cases, abusers simply left without any advance notice and abandoned all financial responsibilities for the household to the survivor.”
After six months, the researchers were able to reach 50 of the 55 initial participants.
Nearly all — 94% — remained housed.
“The majority of survivors talked about how the grant provided stress relief,” the authors write. “By enabling survivors to address their most pressing issue — whether it be the looming loss of belongings in a storage facility or a writ of eviction — survivors described feeling ‘a weight lifted’ and being able to ‘breathe’ again.”
And a March 2022 paper in the Journal of Family Violence looked at how a Housing First service model affected survivors’ housing stability after six months.
The authors surveyed 345 survivors in the Pacific Northwest who were homeless or at risk of becoming homeless and had sought help from one of several domestic violence service organizations.
About two-thirds of participants received assistance the authors considered consistent with a Housing First approach, such as flexible funding.
“Many survivors need financial assistance with issues directly related to housing, such as a security deposit and temporary rental assistance, or help to clear rent arrears,” the authors write. They found survivors who received Housing First assistance overall achieved better housing stability after six months.
That group, along with those who received more traditional services, such as counseling and support groups, also benefited from “a sharp decline in all forms of abuse,” the authors write.
Further reading
“The Propellers of My Life” The Impact of Domestic Violence Transitional Housing on Parents and Children
Leila Wood, Maggy McGiffert, Rachel A. Fusco and Shanti Kulkarni. Child and Adolescent Social Work Journal, January 2022.
Examining Contextual Influences on the Service Needs of Homeless and Unstably Housed Domestic Violence Survivors
Danielle Chiaramonte, et. al. Journal of Community Psychology, June 2021.
Intimate Partner Violence Survivors’ Housing Needs and Preferences: A Brief Report
Cynthia Fraga Rizo, et. al. Journal of Interpersonal Violence, January 2020.
About 33,000 military veterans were without stable housing in 2024 — about 5% of all adults experiencing homelessness — down substantially from 74,000 in 2010, according to the latest estimates from HUD. A nationally representative survey of low-income veterans from 2021 found nearly 20% had experienced homelessness in their lives, compared with 4% of the overall U.S. population.
The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs offers several service programs to help homeless veterans. Some of those programs have been evaluated in academic research.
Similar to survivors of domestic violence, research suggests that rapid housing placement and direct financial assistance are effective ways to reduce homelessness among veterans.
“One major program is Supportive Services for Veteran Families, which offers various rapid rehousing and homelessness prevention services, including financial help, to individual veterans and their households,” write the authors of a December 2024 paper in the journal Health Services Research.
The Supportive Services for Veteran Families program partners with and provides grants to community service organizations across the U.S. The program focuses on homelessness prevention and rapid rehousing for homeless veterans.
The authors examined data on nearly 240,000 veterans experiencing housing instability from October 2015 to December 2018, including veterans who enrolled for service from the Supportive Services for Veteran Families program, and veterans who did not enroll.
Those enrolled in the program were less likely to experience housing instability, particularly around the three-month mark. After three years, however, the effects were smaller between those who enrolled and those who did not enroll.
“Our results suggest that [Supportive Services for Veteran Families], in alignment with the program’s intent of providing time-limited assistance to quickly stabilize enrollees, is an effective strategy for rapidly improving housing instability, but that additional interventions may be needed to continue to reduce housing instability over time,” the authors write.
Another study, published in February 2021 in JAMA Network Open, looked at how direct financial assistance, also via the Supportive Services for Veteran Families, affected housing stability among veterans experiencing or at risk of experiencing homelessness.
The authors examined data on nearly 42,000 veterans enrolled at one of more than 200 organizations in 49 states that provide housing services through the federal program.
About 70% of those veterans received temporary financial assistance — $6,000 per grant on average –while about 30% did not receive financial help. Most were men, with an average age of about 50. The authors defined housing stability as “permanent, independent residence with payment by the program client or housing subsidy after exit from the [federal] program.”
They found that among veterans who received at least $2,000 in temporary financial assistance, 90% left the program into a stable housing situation. Most used the money to cover security deposits or pay rent.
“Given the high cost of providing services to homeless individuals and the substantial adverse implications of homelessness for both physical and mental health, the primary goal of any rapid rehousing program is to facilitate stable housing,” the authors write. “From this perspective, the results of this cohort study may support a continued and perhaps expanded policy shift toward offering this type of assistance to a larger number of households that are experiencing homelessness.”
Further reading
Service Use and Barriers to Care Among Homeless Veterans
Jack Tsai and Katherine Kelton. Journal of Community Psychology, June 2022.
Beyond Housing: Understanding Community Integration Among Homeless-Experienced Veteran Families in the United States
Roya Ijadi-Maghsoodi, et. al. Health and Social Care in the Community, December 2020.
A Picture of the Older Homeless Female Veteran: A Qualitative, Case Study Analysis
Deborah J. Kenny and Linda H. Yoder. Archives of Psychiatric Nursing, August 2019.
While there is not much recent research on the effectiveness of strategies aimed at providing stable housing for older homeless people, at least one review of the literature points to the importance of social interaction for this group.
Neither is there an age that defines someone experiencing homelessness as being “older,” but research and government reports sometimes identify this subgroup as people over 50, though the age threshold varies.
The 2024 HUD point-in-time count, for example, reports 104,000 people over 55 experiencing homelessness and more than 42,000 people over 65. The authors of a March 2021 paper in Aging & Society use a broader definition, examining 22 studies from 1999 to 2019 on initiatives aimed at sheltering homeless people over age 50.
“Compared to younger people experiencing homelessness, and older adults in general, [older people experiencing homelessness] have more complex health and social challenges and significant unmet needs regarding access to suitable shelter/housing and support services,” the authors write.
Sixteen of the studies were peer reviewed and the rest were gray literature, such as reports from nonprofits and government organizations. Ten of the initiatives aimed at sheltering older homeless people were based in the U.S., five were in Canada, four in Australia, two in the United Kingdom and one in Israel.
The initiatives offered a variety of options, including long-term shelter with nursing care, permanent housing with support services, transitional housing, emergency shelters and counseling services without shelter.
The review aimed to identify the types of options available to older homeless people and the research on them — not assess their effectiveness. But the authors note the general importance of individual service and support in improving quality of life for older homeless people.
“[D]espite limited availability, there is some indication that models that co-locate permanent supportive housing with opportunities for socialization and transportation to off-site services are well-suited to meet the diverse physical, mental and social needs of [older people experiencing homelessness],” the authors write. “Such models have the opportunity to support nutrition, social connection, physical and mental health therapy, and more in a central location.”
Finally, a January 2022 study in the journal Psychiatric Services examined whether homeless people in the U.S. achieved stable housing after entering a substance use treatment program — most remained homeless, and being over age 55 was among the factors for this persistent homelessness, the authors found.
Further reading
“I Haven’t Grieved Yet…”: The Experiences of Older Homeless Persons Living in Long-Term Transitional Housing
Émilie Cormier, et. al. The Gerontologist, May 2025.
Loneliness Among Homeless-Experienced Older Adults With Cognitive or Functional Impairments
Yeqing Yuan, et. al. BMC Public Health, February 2024.
“A Right Place for Everybody”: Supporting Aging in the Right Place for Older People Experiencing Homelessness
Rachel Weldrick, et. al. Health and Social Care in the Community, June 2022.
Covering homelessness responsibly
Every news organization covering topics related to homelessness will need to consider language and narrative framings that both respect their sources and meet audience expectations and informational needs.
While reporters should avoid dehumanizing language, such as “vagrants” to describe people without permanent housing, one area of legitimate debate is whether to use the term “unhoused” instead of “homeless.”
“Use the term your readers are most likely to understand and ask sources what they prefer,” advises The Homeless Beat Reporting Collective in their 2025 guide to covering homelessness. Here is that guide, along with two others, offering perspectives from journalists who have reported on homelessness: