Irving Piliavin

The Duration of Homeless Careers: An Exploratory Study

In this article, we examine the duration of homeless careers. We build a model of career length based on four conceptual frameworks: institutional disaffiliation, psychological dysfunction, human capital deficit, and cultural identification. Using survey data from a sample of 331 individuals in Minneapolis, we estimate a structural equation model of homeless career onset and duration. We find that, conditioned on age, people who have less consistent work histories, experienced childhood foster care, and currently express less discomfort with life on the streets have longer homeless careers. Contrary to our hypothesis, we find that people who experienced prehomeless psychiatric hospitalization had relatively shorter homeless careers, and people who suffered from severe symptoms of alcoholism had homeless careers no different in average length than those of other sample members.

Exits from and Returns to Homelessness

This study explores transitions between homeless and domiciled states. It describes the timing of departures from and returns to homelessness, and it tests theoretical propositions linking individual attributes and experiences to these transitions. Four theoretical frameworks guide the analyses: institutional disaffiliation, human capital deficiencies, personal disabilities, and acculturation. The data come from a longitudinal study of homeless individuals in Minneapolis. Various individual attributes are linked with leaving homelessness, including recent employment, welfare receipt, job training, identification with other homeless people, and homeless history. Fewer attributes are linked with returns to homelessness: work history and gender. These findings provide some evidence for existing explanations for homeless transitions, and they suggest promising avenues for further research on the dynamics of homelessness.

Transitions from and Returns to Out-of-Home Care

This longitudinal study employs bivariate probit regression analysis to examine factors associated with returns home from, and reentry to, out-of-home care for 21,484 children placed by child welfare authorities in California. A central focus of the study is to determine the degree to which phenomena unaccounted for in analyses of the returns home from care are correlated with factors unaccounted for in analyses of the process of reentry to care. Although a previous analysis implies direct effects of race and age on foster care reentry, current results suggest that these effects are mediated by other factors. A second concern of the study led to the finding that Aid to Families with Dependent Children eligibility is associated with delays in the return home of children initially placed in kinship foster care.

Stressors, resources, and distress among homeless persons:: a longitudinal analysis

Relations among stressors, resources, and psychological distress were examined using two waves of data obtained from a probability sample of homeless persons (N = 430) residing in a large, demographically diverse county in North California. The focus of research was to examine whether and how social resources and housing resources directly affect distress and mediate the impact of stress factors on depressive symptoms. Path analysis results revealed that levels of psychological distress were responsive to change in objective housing circumstances, with the attainment of domicile status being associated with fewer distress symptoms. Our findings, however, indicated only modest effects of social resources on psychological distress through direct effects and mediating effects of life stressors on distress. Overall, the study suggests that the relationships among stressors, resources, and distress for homeless persons may be understood within the same analytical framework for the general population.

Homeless Spell Exits and Returns: Substantive and Methodological Elaborations on Recent Studies

This article builds upon a series of recent studies that have examined exits from and returns to homelessness. The data come from a three‐wave panel study of homeless persons. The articles major substantive concern is the relationship between the type of housing situations to which homeless persons move upon exiting homeless spells and their likelihood of becoming homeless again. The issue of selection bias due to sample attrition, a serious methodological problem common to longitudinal research, is also addressed.

Involvement of TANF Applicant Families with Child Welfare Services

Few studies examine the relationship between welfare and child welfare populations in the wake of welfare reform. This article compares child welfare services involvement between 1996 Aid to Families with Dependent Children entrants and 1999 Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) applicants in Wisconsin. Results suggest that there is considerable overlap between welfare applicant and child welfare populations, that this overlap has increased significantly since welfare reform, and that, as state TANF caseloads decline, they may be increasingly composed of families that face significant problems in balancing the demands of work and parenting.

Estimating Mental Illness among the Homeless: The Effects of Choice-Based Sampling

The proportion of homeless people who are mentally ill has been a statistic of much interest to scholars and policy makers. James Wright has suggested recently that this statistic can be estimated without significant error, using the proportion of mentally ill among homeless persons who use health clinic services. Wrights assumption was tested employing a sample of homeless people in Minneapolis. The frequency of hospitalization for mental illness among sample members who used health clinic services was significantly greater than that among sample members who did not use clinic services, indicating that Wrights estimate of mental illness among the homeless population may be seriously biased.

Beneficiary Attractiveness and Cost as Determinants of Responses to Routine Requests for Help

An experiment was conducted to determine the effects of beneficiary attractiveness and cost on responses to a routine request for help. Subjects were almost twice as likely to promise to complete a questionnaire for a pleasant experimenter than for an unpleasant experimenter. This effect held for both high and low cost requests. These results were contrasted with a number of previous studies which report failure to find a positive relationship between interpersonal attraction and helping. As expected, cost also affected compliance, with more subjects agreeing to complete a low cost questionnaire task; however, a predicted interaction between attractiveness, cost, and time between request and response was not confirmed. Only 28 percent of those who agreed to help actually completed the questionnaire.

Health Status and Health-Care Utilization among the Homeless

Although previous studies have documented the relatively poor health of homeless people compared with other people, research on the predictors of health status and health-care utilization among the homeless has been quite limited. The study reported here departs from most earlier efforts in that it was based on a comparatively broad sample of homeless individuals and employed logistic regression techniques to identify attributes of the homeless that predict their health status and utilization of health services. Although several such attributes were identified, the research was less successful in determining characteristics of the homeless who reported they were in less than good health but were not receiving health services.

Reducing Discrepancies in Professional and Custodial Perspectives

Conflict between custodial and professional treatment person nel has been a persistent problem in correctional institutions. It has been suggested that a possible solution of this problem lies in reducing the discrepant views of custodians and professionals by providing some overlap in their respective roles. The question investigated in the present study was whether such overlap would reduce this discrepancy. Prison custodial officers who volunteered to counsel inmate groups were found to have attitudes toward inmates significantly more congruent with those of professionals than those of custodians who were not counselors; in addition, they were slightly more positive toward treatment personnel. The results suggest that overlap in custodial and treatment roles may be a viable device for more congruent perspectives and expectations among those carrying out these roles.