Originally posted on Quora
The economics of homelessness are pretty straight forward the psychology of it not so much. While many people like to point to mental illness and drug addiction as the obvious culprits, they ignore the stress diathesis model which demonstrates that the relationship between their mental and material state is reciprocal not linear. The guy mumbling to himself on the street corner probably wouldn’t be doing that if he had a regular nighttime residence. Most mental disorders are manageable and the people who have them can function in society with the right treatment and support network, such as family and friends that can provide emotional support in adversity or a sofa to crash on if they lose their job, fall behind on rent and get evicted. Of course, people aren’t billiard balls; there is no single cause of any social and economic problem. It’s much more useful and accurate to talk about the stressors and risk factors for homelessness than to try to pinpoint causes that are either hasty generalizations or post hoc fallacies. So what are the stressors and risk factors? While the majority of people who become homeless find housing within a year some 40% of the homeless population stay homeless for over a year and have 2 or more bouts of homelessness within three years. This is called chronic homelessness. While transient homelessness (< 1 year) tends to have more economic risk factors chronic homelessness tends to be more of a mental disorder or physical disability problem, but the economic problems are just as pertinent and exacerbate the mental disorders and physical disabilities.
Predicting and Preventing Chronic Homelessness
- Being a low wage worker relative to AMI or average rents in an area; about a third of low wage workers become chronically homeless before losing their jobs and somewhere between 53–40% of homeless individuals (overall) have gainful employment during the year they become homeless with unsheltered individuals tending to be at the lower end of that range.
- Real estate speculation: a Los Angeles study found that just a 5% increase in rent is associated with 2,000 more residents becoming homeless while another found that just a $100 increase in rent is associated with a 9% increase in the homeless population. While this doesn’t demonstrate that rent hikes cause homelessness it is yet another stressor that push people off the proverbial cliff.
- Being released from prison without a halfway house, group home or any relatives to stay with. A criminal record is a barrier to renting even with a job and previous rental history.
- Being raised in the foster care system. While only 5% of young adults (18–24 yrs) come out of foster care, 13% of young adults who become chronically homeless come out of foster care. Additionally, homeless youth (12–17 yrs) and homeless young adults (18–24 yrs) are more likely to be employed than their non-homeless counterparts but earn lower wages.
- Physical Disability: About 39% of the chronically homeless have a physical disability compared to only 16% of those who experience short-term homelessness, and about 38% of the chronically homeless suffer from a chronic physical illness compared to only 16% of those who experience short-term homelessness.
- Unresolved trauma: PTSD rates were found to be three times higher for participants in the study than for the general population; the study found that 35% of low income and homeless mothers have a lifetime diagnosis of PTSD 88% of homeless women and 79% of low income women had suffered physical and/or sexual abuse at some time in their past. In general, the experience of homelessness is associated with higher rates of psychiatric distress and alcohol use for people diagnosed with psychiatric disorders and the duration of homelessness is positively associated with lower recovery rates from mental disorders.
- Mental Disorder: A study comparing the prevalence of mental health and substance abuse disorders among housed low income and homeless mothers with children with similar data on the general population, compiled in the National Comorbidity survey, found that more than two-thirds of the publicly housed and homeless mothers had at least one lifetime mental health disorder diagnosis while nearly half had two or more lifetime diagnoses.
- Substance abuse disorder: About 37% of the chronically homeless engage in drug abuse compared to only 14% of those who experience short-term homelessness.
As I noted in a previous post, the last two are often symptoms and poor coping mechanisms/maladaptive behaviors people develop in response to the stress the experience during their bout of homelessness.
Although chronic homelessness is closely associated with mental disorders and substance or alcohol abuse the latter is not necessarily the cause of the former. In fact, much of the literature has found that chronic homelessness, mental disorders and substance/alcohol abuse fits the traditional stress-diathesis model i.e. that the experience of homelessness itself may exacerbate vulnerabilities to certain mental disorders, and, in turn, the mental disorders may lead to maladaptive behaviors that prolong homelessness creating a vicious cycle of chronic homelessness (Castellow et al., 2015). Thus, mental illness and substance or alcohol abuse are both predictors and risk factors for chronic homelessness. Many studies have found that the experience of homelessness is actually a precursor to illicit substance and alcohol abuse, which is adopted as a maladaptive coping mechanism to diminish the stress of homelessness (Castellow et al., 2015). Homelessness often results in negative outcomes similar to those experienced by people diagnosed with PTSD such as learned helplessness, substance abuse (as a coping mechanism), social isolation and alienation (Castellow et al., 2015).