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Despite a significant evidence base illustrating the issue of housing insecurity and homelessness experienced by women over the age of 55 in Australia [Pawson et al., 2018; Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW), 2021b; Mission Australia 2022; Per Capita 2022], there continues to be a knowledge gap in the representation of older women in current Federal and New South Wales (NSW) State Government housing and homelessness policies and initiatives. This paper aims to identify the extent and ways in which older women were represented (or not represented) in the Federal and NSW State housing and homelessness policies in 2022.

Of the total primary and supplementary Federal and NSW State policy and strategy documents, 16 were collected through a systematic review and then analysed using a Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) framework and feminist lens to explore quotes, phrases, keywords and language choices which suggested prevalent themes, rhetorical devices and dominant discourses.

Three significant themes were identified by the analysis (1) “relinquished responsibility”, (2) “inconsistent rhetoric” and (3) “homogenising and ideological cherry picking”. These themes presented the authors with three main discussion points to inform policy reform which we have addressed in relation to policy implications, evidence-based policy decision-making and impacts on older women.

The combination of a systematic review with CDA provides a unique approach to exploring homelessness policy for older women.

Due to ongoing inequities in the social determinants of health and systemic barriers, homelessness continues to be a significant concern that disproportionately impacts racialized communities. Despite constituting a small proportion of the population, Black individuals are over-represented among people experiencing homelessness in many Canadian cities. However, although Black homelessness in Canada is a pressing issue, it has received limited attention in the academic literature. The purpose of this paper is to examine the reported prevalence of Black homelessness across Canada.

By consulting enumerations from 61 designated communities that participated in the 2018 Nationally Coordinated Point-in-Time Count and two regional repositories – one for homeless counts supported by the government of British Columbia and another from the Rural Development Network – this paper reports on the scale and scope of Black homelessness across Canada.

Significantly, these reports demonstrate that Black people are over-represented among those experiencing homelessness compared to local and national populations. These enumerations also demonstrate significant gaps in the reporting of Black homelessness and inadequate nuance in data collection methods, which limit the ability of respondents to describe their identity beyond “Black.”

This research provides an unprecedented examination of Black homelessness across Canada and concludes with recommendations to expand knowledge on this important and under-researched issue, provide suggestions for future iterations of homeless enumerations and facilitate the development of inclusive housing policy.

To understand how females who had recently been street homeless made sense of their lived experience, seven women engaged in semi-structured interviews. This study aims to provide an insight into the complexities of the gendered homeless experience, while using theories of trauma and victimisation to propose a new approach to understanding the cycle of female homelessness.

An interpretative phenomenological analysis approach was chosen to explore the phenomenon of female homelessness. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with a small homogenous sample of women recruited in a city in the south of England.

Two super-ordinate themes emerged: victimisation and trauma and the group and the individual. In the male-dominated world of homelessness, women were caught in a cycle of multiple traumatic loss, compounded by pervasive gender-based violence, struggles in identity and systematic control. Gendered, trauma-informed women’s homelessness services are required.

Findings demonstrate the desperate need for an expansion in female-only homelessness services. The lived experience of the participants adds to an evidence base, which is vital to inform effective trauma-informed gendered service provision.

Homelessness policies draw principally on the prevalent literature on men; the UK research with women is lacking. This study gives voice to a hidden population, using the lived experience of women to suggest a new model of female homelessness.

People experiencing homelessness are high-users of hospital care in Canada. To better understand the scope of the issue, and how these patients are discharged from hospital, a national survey of key stakeholders was conducted in 2017. The paper aims to discuss this issue.

The Canadian Observatory on Homelessness distributed an online survey to their network of members through e-mail and social media. A sample of 660 stakeholders completed the mixed-methods survey, including those in health care, non-profit, government, law enforcement and academia.

Results indicate that hospitals and homelessness sector agencies often struggle to coordinate care. The result is that these patients are usually discharged to the streets or shelters and not into housing or housing with supports. The health care and homelessness sectors in Canada are currently structured in a way that hinders collaborative transfers of patient care. The three primary and inter-related gaps raised by survey participants were: communication, privacy and systems pressures.

The findings are limited to those who voluntarily completed the survey and may indicate self-selection bias. Results are limited to professional stakeholders and do not reflect patient views.

Identifying systems gaps from the perspective of those who work within health care and homelessness sectors is important for supporting system reforms.

This survey was the first to collect nationwide stakeholder data on homelessness and hospital discharge in Canada. The findings help inform policy recommendations for more effective systems alignment within Canada and internationally.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the lived experiences of women without children experiencing housing instability and homelessness in Calgary, Canada; and narratives of what triggered their journeys were constructed according to the tenets of hermeneutic phenomenology, and suggest a framework for assisting these women.

The design for this study is qualitative, approached through hermeneutic phenomenology rooted in Gadamerian philosophical hermeneutics (Gadamer, 2004). Hermeneutic phenomenology, as a research method has provided insight into understanding phenomena and human experiences that are important to human science professionals.

The experience of homelessness for women without children started while they still lived at home, but after they lost all sense of “being at home” as a consequence of identifiable negative home experiences, such as abuse. The effects or impacts of stable childhood or adult home experiences and the implications of such in contributing to the feelings of homelessness were pervasive in the stories told by these women.

Access to housing does not mean getting out of the feeling of homelessness, because the trauma that triggers the experience for the clients often last for a life time. Long-term engagement with the client will be synonymous to increasing the possibility that they can be stabilized permanently. Resources dedicated to these clients must be tailored to each client’s needs, with strong agency collaboration with the mainstream systems.

Community health nurses and other support workers for individuals experiencing homelessness need to build bridges with inter-professional groups to close the gap created by societal attitudes toward women and domestic abuse survivors through advocacy and education, especially in countries where women are still treated as second class citizens.

Although there has been a considerable amount of research conducted on the determinants of homelessness and housing instabilities in women or their pathways into homelessness, the plight of women without children and their experiences while homeless have received little attention in literature. This study explored the lived experiences of women without children experiencing homelessness and narratives of what triggered their journeys were constructed according to the tenets of hermeneutic phenomenology, and suggest a framework for assisting these women.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a human ecology economics (HEE) framework for understanding and addressing homelessness, especially as it exists in California and the San Francisco Bay Area. The role of business and private “stakeholders of the homeless” is emphasized.

The HEE approach relies on evolutionary and complex systems processes, and it incorporates interdisciplinary material from the humanities. Within HEE, an early-stage exploratory research method is used. In-depth interviews with 16 long-term residents who are also managers in various organizations help to identify private-sector perceptions including how businesses can engage with and support the homeless.

In the current balance between needed supplies of “production capital,” which includes affordable housing, shelter beds, food, clothing, medical supplies and so on and “transaction capital,” which is an interacting mix of social capital, informational capital and financial capital, the authors find that the business community needs to pay greater attention to deficits in “transaction capital.”

It is beyond the scope of this paper, and beyond the current ability of complex system modeling, to prioritize the best interventions across various types of homeless communities. However, for early-stage research, the authors have provided a useful ontology of the human ecology of homelessness that might inform further research and policy initiatives. Follow-on research might then investigate, with more rigorous methods, the narrower causalities between subcomponents of one’s ontology.

Scholars, policymakers and business community activists might appreciate the more comprehensive and accessible interdisciplinary framework for understanding the causes and possible responses to homelessness.

Homelessness in the public place presents a complex issue to downtown redevelopment and management efforts. Although business communities are commonly perceived to take hostile, often punitive, approaches to deal with homelessness, such perception does not reflect recent alternative approaches. This paper aims to examine versatile approaches that district management organizations take to address homelessness, focusing on the role of business improvement districts (BIDs) in the USA.

This paper used a mixed method of data collection and analysis that combines a nationwide survey of BIDs and in-depth interviews with people who work at or in collaboration with BIDs in Washington, DC.

The findings suggest that BIDs, as one of the major organizations that serve the interests of property and business owners in commercial areas, have the potential to balance their traditional roles as a district manager with their alternative roles as advocates, mediators and service providers to address homelessness.

Owing to the small number of BIDs reflected in the survey and interviews, the research results may lack generalizability. Further research on the outcomes of the BID-homeless intervention efforts will benefit the future practice.

The paper suggests that BIDs can implement a more cooperative approach to addressing homelessness in partnership with the public and human service sectors.

This paper discusses the versatile roles of BIDs in dealing with homelessness.

People experiencing homelessness are being identified as a potentially vulnerable group in relation to gambling-related harm. The purpose of this paper is to explore the links between gambling-related harm and homelessness.

A scoping review of the English-language literature was conducted in 2016-2017 using a wide range of international sources. Qualitative content analysis was employed to code and identify key themes within the literature.

Five themes were identified: emerging knowledge about why people experiencing homelessness may participate in gambling; emerging knowledge about the prevalence of gambling within the homeless population; the likelihood that gambling-related harm is under-reported within the homeless population; emerging knowledge about the extent that people experiencing homelessness access gambling support services; and limited awareness about the potential impact of gambling participation among people experiencing homelessness.

The paper reviews research concerning the links between gambling, gambling-related harm and homelessness, which may be relevant to those working with people experiencing homelessness.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the appropriateness of mediation as a homelessness prevention tool for statutorily homeless people who are in need of emergency housing assistance from local authorities in England. It is argued that although mediation is potentially an effective method for facilitating communication as a homelessness prevention tool, caution needs to be exercised in its use in attempting to prevent immediate homelessness.

In‐depth interviews were carried out with five housing law practitioners and six mediators. The paper also draws on observations made by commentators on homelessness legislation as well as ADR. Government papers, including guidance and policy papers and statutes, have been examined.

Mediation could potentially offer effective assistance to homeless people, although it is questionable whether immediate homelessness could genuinely be prevented. In addition, in order to prevent potentially unlawful decisions being made, local authority officers need to take into account their reactive duties under Part VII of the Housing Act 1996 as amended by the Homelessness Act 2002.

Findings from the research address homelessness mediation, an area that requires discussion. More research is needed on the benefits of mediation to homeless people.

The paper contributes to discussions between a range of academics and practitioners interested in the potential benefits of mediation in the context of homelessness work.

This article aims to describe methodological issues in relation to the definition of homelessness and the drawing of samples of young homeless people in four European countries. The purposes of the research project were, first, to make a comparison of different homeless situations facing young people in these four countries, and second, to introduce early intervention and action planning methodologies developed in the UK and The Netherlands to other countries in the study – Portugal (a family welfare society) and the Czech Republic (an ex‐communist regime redeveloping its welfare policies).

After extensive discussions and key worker interviews with local agencies, 54 homeless young people were interviewed in each country. Each sample was intended to be purposive in that it should recruit homeless young men and women from those born in that country from the dominant (white) ethnic group, born in that country from minority ethnic groups, and young people not born in that country. A major issue was how to define homelessness in order to be able to recruit across the spectrum of homeless youth.

The purposive samples recruited in the four countries reflected the availability of services in those countries and levels of family support. Whilst young homeless people in The Netherlands and the UK were mostly living in supported housing, in Portugal they were living as “hidden homeless” and in the Czech Republic on the streets or in squats.

The methodological difficulties encountered during the project are themselves a useful lesson learnt, for the creation of trans‐national understanding and politicy.

Nevertheless, despite the very different circumstances of limited services in Portugal and the Czech Republic, it appeared that both early intervention methods and key working approaches could be applied broadly across the EU.

Transnational studies of youth homelessness are rare and therefore produce particularly useful insights for research, policy and practice.