SW 495 Chapter Notes - Chapter 3: Great Barrington, Massachusetts, Skid Row, Supplemental Security Income
Document Summary
Cross-sectional studies on homelessness used to assume that homelessness was something into which individuals fall and remain. However, homelessness is not a chronic condition for the majority of those referred to as. It is a dynamic state that individuals enter, exit, and then often reenter repeatedly over time. The course of homelessness is the process by which homeless people exit and reenter homelessness over time. Most of the studies of homelessness that began emerging in the mid-1980s were cross- sectional in nature. Questions tended to focus on the amount of time individuals reported being homeless. Questions were often posed only in terms of an individuals" current episode of homelessness, ignoring the possibility that there may have been past episodes. Results are difficult to interpret due to this. More precisely worded questions emerged, and it was discovered that recurrent homelessness is in fact a common experience.
