Abstract copyright UK Data Service and data collection copyright owner.
A comparative study of the causes of new episodes of homelessness among people aged 50 or more years was undertaken in Boston, Massachusetts (USA), Melbourne, Australia, and four English cities. The aims were to make a substantial contribution to the predominantly American debate on the causes of homelessness, and to make practice recommendations for the improvement of prevention. The study had several objectives. It aimed to collect information about the antecedents, triggers and risk factors for becoming homeless in later life and about the national and local policy and service contexts. Furthermore, the researchers aimed to analyse and interpret the findings with reference to an integrated model of the causes of homelessness that represented structural and policy factors, including housing, health and social service organisation and delivery factors, and personal circumstances, events, problems and dysfunctions. The aim was to do this collaboratively, by drawing on the project partners' experience and knowledge. Finally, it was hoped to develop recommendations for housing, primary health care and social welfare organisations for the prevention of homelessness. This was to be done by identifying the common sequences and interactions of events that precede homelessness and their markers (or 'early warning' indicators) and by holding workshops in England with practitioners and their representative organisations on new ways of working. By the study of contrasting welfare and philanthropic regimes in a relatively homogeneous category of homeless incidence (i.e. recent cases among late middle-aged and older people), it was hoped that valuable insights into the relative contributions of the policy, service and personal factors would be obtained. The study focused on older people who had recently become homeless, purposely to gather detailed and reliable information about the prior and contextual circumstances. To have included people who had been homeless for several years would have reduced the quality of the data because of 'recall' problems. Users should note that data from the Australian sample for the study are not included in this dataset.
Main Topics:
The data file includes information about the English respondents and those from Boston. It was compiled in two stages. The first stage involved each project partner entering the pre-coded responses into the file. All partners then identified themes and created codes for the open-ended responses, and the resulting variables were added. Data quality-control procedures included blind checks of the data coding and keying. The first 200 variables pertain to information collected from the respondents. They comprise descriptive variables of the circumstances prior to homelessness, including housing tenure during the three years prior to the survey, previous homelessness, employment history, income, health and addiction problems, and contacts with family, friends and formal services. The respondents were asked to rate whether specific factors were implicated in becoming homeless, and where appropriate, a following open-ended question sought elaboration. The remaining variables comprise information collected from the respondents' 'key workers' about their understanding of the events and states that led to their clients becoming homeless.
No sampling frame was available. The sample profiles have been compared with those of all homeless people (not just the recently homeless) in the study locations, most effectively in London and Boston. No gross biases were revealed. The samples represent a large percentage of the clients who presented to the collaborating organisations during the study period and who gave their informed consent to participate. Agreed definitions of homelessness were: sleeping on the streets or in temporary accommodation such as shelters; being without accommodation following eviction or discharge from prison or hospital; living temporarily with relatives or friends because the person has no accommodation, but only if the stay had not exceeded six months, and the person did not pay rent and was required to leave. People who had been previously homeless were included in the survey if they had been housed for at least 12 months prior to the current episode of homelessness.
Face-to-face interview
Self-completion
the 'key workers' (case managers) completed questionnaires about their assessments of the respondents’ problems and of the events and states that led to homelessness. Further clarifications and checks were made by telephone.
