Why Do Homeless Families Exit and Return the Homeless Shelter? Factors Affecting the Risk of Family Homelessness in Salt Lake County (Utah, United States) as a Case Study

Keuntae Kim and Ivis Garcia
Additional contact information
Keuntae Kim: Department of City and Metropolitan Planning, University of Utah, 375 South 1530 East, Suite 235, Salt Lake City, UT 84112, USA
Ivis Garcia: Department of City and Metropolitan Planning, University of Utah, 375 South 1530 East, Suite 235, Salt Lake City, UT 84112, USA

IJERPH, 2019, vol. 16, issue 22, 1-23

Abstract: Previous quantitative research on family homelessness has addressed a question of why some households become homeless. However, why some homeless families return the shelter to repeat their homelessness has not been explored well. This study aims at providing a comprehensive insight into the dynamics of homeless families by identifying the physical, social, and economic characteristics of a homeless family affecting the likelihood of their decision to stay, exit, and return the shelter. The relationships of factors with shelter exit and return were examined using Kaplan-Meier estimates of survival times and Cox Proportional Hazard regression analysis. This study employs a sample of 2348 historical records for 1462 homeless families registered to the Homeless Management Information System (HMIS) database between January 1, 2015 and December 31, 2017. The results indicate that structural factors such as subsidized housing program enrollment during a homeless episode and prior income play a significant role in reducing the risks of shelter exit and return rather than physical characteristics of a homeless family. Additionally, results show that variations in prior residence and exit destination of homeless families serve as factors determining the length of their shelter stay and the likelihood to return to the shelter. Integration of both shelter exit and return analysis results make policymakers and urban planners think about developing policies for coordination of housing and economic stability to address family homelessness.

Keywords: family homelessness; homeless shelter exits and returns; subsidized housing programs; Homeless Management Information System (HMIS); survival data analysis; hazard risk; Salt Lake City; Utah; United States (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/16/22/4328/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/16/22/4328/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:16:y:2019:i:22:p:4328-:d:284212

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().