Doctoral Dissertation Research: Homeless service systems and the homeless

无家可归者服务系统和无家可归者克里斯托弗·赫林这座美国城市的无家可归者管理依赖于街道、庇护所和州政府支持的住房计划。社会科学家不清楚这些机构在无家可归者管理的内部经济中是如何相互联系的，以及这些关系是如何影响无家可归者的生存的。此外，美国每个城市的收容所床位和无家可归者住房单位供应不足。因此，存在一个重要的经验谜题，即在这种住房稀缺的背景下，某些个人和群体如何、为什么以及何时最终进入一家机构而不是另一家机构。这篇论文不仅将无家可归者视为贫困的结果，还试图解释无家可归者管理机构在对穷人进行分类和分层方面所起的作用，并可能通过针对无家可归者的政策来加深危险住房者的贫困。这篇论文的研究将整合社会学、社会福利和公共卫生的多个研究领域，并帮助理解政策如何影响边缘群体。为了回答无家可归者服务体系中谁得到什么以及何时得到什么的经验难题，本论文将对旧金山的街道、收容所和永久支持性住房计划进行比较研究。旧金山被认为是一个多服务收容所的全国典范，并采取“住房优先”的方式。这项研究将在机构进入、限制和偏好的三种常见解释中做出裁决：(A)制度因素(B)可自由支配的因素和(C)影响他们进入、离开、限制和在街道、收容所和无家可归者住房之间流通的个人因素。论文还将评估居住在一个或另一个机构中对健康、工作、福利、犯罪和社会关系的影响。这些过程将通过“多方面的民族志”进行研究，一方面在街道、庇护所和永久支持性住房中与社会工作者一起工作，另一方面与无家可归者一起在这些相同的空间中导航。这项研究对无家可归者社会学、社会福利、贫困社会学做出了贡献，并对无家可归者和住房政策的潜在贡献产生了强大而广泛的影响。

Homeless Service Systems and the HomelessChristopher HerringHomeless management in the US city relies on the street, shelter, and state supported housing programs. Social scientists do not have a clear understanding of how these institutions relate to one another within an internal economy of homeless management and how these relationships shape the survival of the houseless. Further, every city in the United has an insufficient supply of shelter beds and homeless housing units. There is, then, an important empirical puzzle as to how, why, and when, in this context of housing scarcity, certain individuals and groups end up in one institution rather than another. Rather than just view homelessness as an outcome of poverty, this dissertation seeks to explain the role institutions of homeless management play in sorting and stratifying the poor and possibly deepening the poverty of the precariously housed through policy toward the homeless. This dissertation research will integrate several fields of study in sociology, social welfare and public health and help understand the ways in which policy affects marginalized groups.To answer the empirical puzzle of who gets what and when within a homeless services system, the dissertation will provide a comparative study of the streets, shelters, and permanent supportive housing programs in the city of San Francisco; a city considered a national model for its multi-service shelters and "housing first" approach. The study will adjudicate among three common explanations of institutional entry, restriction, and preference: (a) institutional factors (b) discretionary factors and (c) individual factors that affect their entry, exit, restriction, and circulation between street, shelter, and homeless housing. The dissertation will also assess how residing within one institution or another affects health, work, welfare, criminalization, and social ties. These processes will be studied through a "multi-sided ethnography," working alongside social workers on the streets, shelters, and permanent supportive housing on the one hand, and navigating alongside homeless people through these same spaces. This research contributes to the sociology of the homeless, social welfare, sociology of poverty and has strong broader impacts in its potential contribution to homeless and housing policy.