This study investigates the interaction of HIV/AIDS and housing, identifying barriers affecting people living with HIV/AIDS (PLWHA) in accessing fair housing options essential in understanding physical and mental health outcomes associated with unstable housing and homelessness in this population. This research follows a three-essay format to examine the relationship between HIV and housing. The first essay, a systematic review, evaluated peer-reviewed literature reporting housing access/insecurity/assistance/options, housing impact, and unmet needs of older individuals living with HIV in North America from 2012 to 2023. Furthermore, latent semantic analysis (LSA), a text-mining technique, and singular value decomposition (SVD) for text clustering were utilized to examine unstructured data from the abstracts selected from the review. The second essay is a quantitative study that examines the correlation between housing access to HIV-related stigma, awareness of housing assistance programs, and demographics. The results provide insight into homelessness and unstable housing experienced by PLWHA despite available resources and laws prohibiting discrimination. The third essay is a qualitative study that uses semi-structured interviews with HIV housing organizations' staff to highlight the role they play in combating homelessness, providing health and supportive services, and addressing emerging unmet needs. This research contributes to existing knowledge on housing gaps and unfulfilled needs for people living with HIV.

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Thesis (M.S.)--Boston University / PLEASE NOTE: Boston University Libraries did not receive an Authorization To Manage form for this thesis or dissertation. It is therefore not openly accessible, though it may be available by request. If you are the author or principal advisor of this work and would like to request open access for it, please contact us at open-help@bu.edu. Thank you. / Objectives: (1) To examine whether homelessness predicted earlier resumption of substance use after inpatient detoxification; and (2) to seek evidence concerning the impact of post-detoxification stabilization programs on homeless and housed persons in relation to recurrent substance use. Data Sources/Study Setting: Prospective six-month cohort of 470 addicted persons entering a publicly-funded urban detoxification program. Study Design: Survival analysis methods were used to determine the association between homelessness, stabilization program use, and time to recurrent substance use. Data Collection/Extraction Methods: The main analyses rely on baseline and six month interviews using standardized instruments. Additional analyses include interviews obtained after six months, and statewide administrative records of recurrent detoxification. Principal Findings: Among 254 persons available at six months, 76% reported recurrent substance use. Homeless persons not using stabilization programs experienced the greatest hazard of return to substance use after detoxification, Hazard Ratio (HR) 1.26, 95% CI (0.88,1.80). Homeless persons using these programs had the lowest rate of return to substance use: HR 0.61, 95% CI (0.40,0.94). A similar impact of stabilization programs was not seen among housed subjects. Analyses suggest that subjects available at six months were representative of the entire cohort. Conclusions: Post-detoxification stabilization programs were associated with improved outcomes for homeless addicted persons. / 2999-01-01

Successful service coordination for the homeless depends on the ability of diverse organizations to effectively collaborate. This study utilizes a life-cycle framework to expand on the collaborative governance theory by highlighting the different stages of collaboration that homeless service networks encounter. Activation, collectivity, and institutionalization are three stages used to uncover the unique nature of emergency discharge planning processes. Since collaboration is not a static process and government regulation for emergency discharge plans were recently enacted in 2012, collaborative networks encounter challenges and success factors at different stages. A qualitative case-study approach of organizational leaders in homeless service networks in Texas (Dallas, Ft. Worth and Houston) examines stages of collaboration. Results show common success and challenge factors identified among the three networks, but the factors take on different forms in relation to where the networks are at in the coordination stages. Practitioners can use the findings from this study as a guide to set up benchmarks and measurable objectives to identify strengths and weaknesses in their coordination processes.

I led a participatory action research (PAR) project with the staff and homeless clients of Ahope Day Center in Asheville, North Carolina, which was meant to evaluate client satisfaction with services and attitudes about certain issues. Project is led by an inquiry group consisting of members of Ahope staff and Ahope clients. The project is a co-designed, co-implemented, and co-interpreted mixed-method evaluation of Ahope's services, client attitudes about education and the environment, client adaptive strategies, optimism levels, and a mapping of client daily routines. The data was collected through participant observation, document analysis, surveys, a listing activity, and informal interviews. Documents were coded using grounded theory and themes emerged related to the value of the intangibles of security, community, and ‘being seen' at Ahope while some suggestions were also made. Findings included client attitudes indicating the importance of the environment and education to clients, high optimism levels among clients, and a number of suggestions for the improvement of Ahope's services.

The thesis deals with the problem of homeless people dying in the region of Český Krumlov. It focuses on homelessness, the causes of homelessness and also the posibilities of help. Further, the thesis encompasses information about dying and death, including the death of homeless people.Their death is connected to statements about organising social funerals, including available information from the Municipality of Český Krumlov and how many social funerals were organised between the years 2014-2018. A very often used technique at work is a semi-structured interview with social workers from the social department of the Municipality of Český Krumlov, Kaplice and Vyšší Brod and the caretaking personnel of the Hospital Český Krumlov, ltd. The individual testimonies are compared between each other. The testimonies of the respondents go allong the whole thesis where there is an effort of confrontation of information from professional literature and the interception of reality from experience. Another key source for this thesis is the evaluation of data from questionnaires given to people without a home that stay arond the area of Český Krumlov and focused on finding out their opinion on death and dying. The topic is accompanied by many ethical contexts. Firstly the fact of surviving as a homeless person, secondly the level of help that is provided by the state and what are the limits of the help possibilities. And last but not least, how this help is acutaly used and perceived by the homeless people.

Homelessness and rough sleeping has dramatically increased in the UK over the past six years. Links between welfare changes, inequality and social exclusion are pronounced. This study looked into the experiences of a particular group of people experiencing homelessness; those with complex needs who had had multiple moves round homeless projects. Qualitative research of the lived experiences of those experiencing homelessness is limited, particularly for this group of individuals in the UK. An Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis was applied to interviews undertaken with six men with these experiences. The four main themes from this analysis were Moving forward vs no way forward, Being here has really helped but it's only temporary, Being treated as different and Desperately longing for yet deeply fearing relationships. These themes were supported with extensive participant quotes and were contextualised in the current literature. The themes reflect and demonstrate: Challenges with hope and future plans and the role of substance use; Relationships to help in the context of conditionality and the temporary nature of projects; Issues regarding coherent identity development and stigmatisation; and Complexity around forming relationships. These findings develop our understanding of this population and support improvements in practice. A clear role for Clinical Psychologists in this area was identified and recommendations across domains of individual, service level and community practice were presented.

The paths to homelessness are complex and attributable to a combination of structural issues associated with poverty that can magnify personal vulnerabilities. However, as homelessness became more prominent in news media during the 1980s, media discourse increasingly focused on personal characteristics within the homeless population which cast people as personally responsible for their plight. Simultaneously, media explanations for homelessness that called attention to structural conditions that contribute to homelessness decreased during the decade. Scholars explain this shift by situating it within the social and political climate of the time. This study extends the line of research on homelessness in news media in order to understand how coverage of homelessness has changed between the 1980s and the 2010s. A quantitative content analysis examines newspaper articles in two cities in the western United States -- Portland, Oregon, and San Diego, California -- where homelessness is a prominent and enduring social and political issue. News articles are examined for changes between two time periods (1988-1990 and 2014-2016) in mentions of personal and structural factors as well as changes in the discussion of solutions for homelessness. Results show an increase over time in portrayals of structural factors that contribute to homelessness as well as an increase in talk about permanent housing solutions. However, mentions of personal problems and behaviors, such as mental illness and substance abuse, have also increased. This suggests that, while news discourse may be moving toward more nuanced portrayals that acknowledge societal factors, news media still tend to focus on characteristics of homelessness that can cast people as personally culpable.

Thesis (PhD.(Pastoral Family Therapy))-University of Pretoria, 2007. / Includes bibliographical references. Available on the Internet via the World Wide Web.

Urban homelessness is one of the most blatant forms of social exclusion in advanced capitalist societies. In Canada, the United States, and the United Kingdom, homelessness has become particularly entrenched due to systemic forces such as global economic recession, the restructuring of regional economies, the dismantlement of the welfare state, and the erosion of affordable housing that together have pushed more people towards economic marginality and housing insecurity. Despite years of advocacy and 'high profile' government investments, homelessness has persisted as an intransigent social problem. A central purpose of this doctoral thesis is to provide some insight into how homelessness is being 'managed' in one Canadian city. The papers gathered together in this dissertation are based on three years of ethnographic fieldwork (conducted between 2006 and 2009) in a medium-sized, de-industrializing city in the province of Ontario. The specific focus of the thesis is the emergency shelter system. Over the past ten years, a number of new social service models have emerged in response to rising rates of homelessness. As these have been adopted homeless shelter systems in many Canadian cities have undergone significant reconfigurations. This thesis focuses on some of the new 'management spaces' that are emerging in this unfolding policy context. The first paper explores the experiences of voluntary sector organizations and local state authorities. The second paper explores the experiential dimensions of a unique service environment providing emergency shelter and social services. The third paper examines the personal experiences of chronically homeless men as they adapt to life in an innovative 'special care' facility. / Thesis / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)