Professor Shinn said, For the last six years, government and private foundations have worked under the assumption that behavioral disorders are the root cause of homelessness and that an individual cannot be stably housed until these disorders have been addressed. Our research refutes that assumption. We found that subsidized housing succeeds in curing homelessness among families, regardless of behavioral disorders or other conditions. Whatever their problems substance abuse, mental illness, physical illness or a history of incarceration nearly all of the families in our study became stably housed when they received subsidized housing. Professor Weitzman said, Our research indicates that homelessness is not a permanent condition.
People do get themselves out of the problem.
But it only happens when some intervention occurs that provides them with access to the housing market. That said, the scariest finding to emerge from our study is the extraordinary number of poor people in New York City who are badly housed and therefore at risk of becoming homeless. And we know that doubling up always a fragile social arrangement often precedes entry into the shelter system. Under these conditions, our results suggest, family homelessness will endure. The researchers conducted interviews with 266 homeless families as they requested shelter and with a comparison sample of 298 families selected at random from the welfare caseload.