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What are Some Risk Factors for Homelessness?

Deborah H. Siegel, PhD, LICSW, DCSW, ACSW

January 28, 2022

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Question

What are some risk factors for homelessness? 

Answer

There several risk factors that set a person up to experience homelessness. One risk factor is bankruptcy. In our culture we think that bankruptcy is the result of poor business decisions or poor management of one's personal finances, when in fact, the majority of bankruptcy in America is caused by medical bills. Medical illness can lead to job loss, and ultimately eviction. A person who has been evicted, who actually recovers from their illness and is able to get a good paying stable job is still considered a bad rental risk and will be discriminated against in their effort to get another apartment or to get a mortgage.

We know that working full time at minimum or low wage work can keep a person below the federal poverty line. You can be working as hard as you can possibly work and not even begin to approach earning enough money to pay the average rent of an apartment. Therefore, this is a risk factor for homelessness as well. 

Other risk factors for homelessness, include children aging out of foster care. Aging out of foster care creates a disproportionate number of children and adolescents who experience homelessness. In addition, being a parent with children makes a person very at risk for experiencing homelessness. 

Being a college student is also a risk factor for homelessness. There is an enormous number of college students who are food insecure and housing insecure, living in cars or couch surfing, who have no home because the costs of college/university education has far exceeded the rates of inflation. 

It is also important to note that having a developmental disability, being an immigrant, having a trauma history, being human trafficked, being LGBTQI, and being on SSI or SSDI  are risk factors that set a person up to experience homelessness. 

 

 

This Ask the Expert is an edited excerpt from the webinar,  Homelessness: Myths and Intervention Guidelines, presented by Deborah H. Siegel, PhD, LICSW, DCSW, ACSW

 


deborah h siegel

Deborah H. Siegel, PhD, LICSW, DCSW, ACSW

 

Dr. Siegel is a Professor in the School of Social Work at Rhode Island College. She has also taught social work on the faculties at the University of Missouri-Columbia and Auburn University and as an Edith Abbott fellow at the School of Social Service Administration at the University of Chicago. She has published research on a 22-year-long study of families living with open adoptions; and she has published numerous journal articles, chapters in books, and encyclopedia articles on other aspects of the adoption experience. Dr. Siegel is co-author of books on how to help struggling teens, many of whom have been adopted, and she has been instrumental in passing legislation allowing adult adoptees access to their original birth certificates. 

Dr. Siegel also co-teaches a course titled “Homelessness:  Clinical and Policy Interventions” and a course at Brown University’s Alpert Medical School titled “Homelessness and Healthcare.”  Her fieldwork has included providing clinical services with mothers experiencing homelessness who have lost custody of their children,  street outreach with interdisciplinary teams using trauma-informed approaches to engage people experiencing homelessness in services, and collaborating with a range of community organizations doing program development and advocacy at the legislative and executive levels of government.  She has published articles on homelessness in the journal, Social Work Education, and in Social Work Today

In addition, Dr. Siegel actively engages in legislative advocacy on a range of other human service issues, and she is a consultant, trainer, and conference presenter for many agencies across the United States.


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