Typologizing Temporal Homelessness: Why Three Kinds? Comparing Time-Enfolded and Time-Patterned Approaches
Analyses of and policymaking about homelessness assume there are three kinds of temporally-based homeless: transitional, episodic and long- term. This assumption is based on empirical evidence developed by Kuhn and Culhane that supports earlier theorizing about such a typology. Theoretically and empirically, this temporally-based typology “enfolds” time by summing or averaging over time some measure(s) of homelessness. But doing so loses potentially useful temporal information concerning the sequencing, duration and timing of homelessness. In our talk, we use a “time-patterned” approach to capture this information and then compare how this approach performs relative to the time-enfolded approach. Our findings suggest the commonly used three-fold typology is not sufficient to capture the temporal nature of homelessness. More generally, our findings suggest the utility of an individual-centered, rather than a variable-centered, approach to forming temporally-based typologies.
Mary Clare Lennon, PhD, Professor of Sociology and Public Health at the Graduate Center, City University of New York, has spent much of her career examining the relationship of socioeconomic status and gender to health problems. Currently the associate editor of Women and Health, much of Lennon's recent work has focused on the health and well being of low-income populations. Co-editor of Policy into Action: Implementation and Welfare Reform and editor of Women and Health: Work, Welfare and Well-Being, she also has contributed to several additional books that examine the mental health of low-income women. Lennon is also Professor of Clinical Sociomedical Sciences at Columbia's Mailman School of Public Health and member of the executive committee of the Center for Homelessness Prevention Studies.
William McAllister, PhD is a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute for Social and Economic Research and Policy (ISERP) at Columbia University and is a Co-Director of the Methods Core of the Columbia Center for Homelessness Prevention Studies. Dr. McAllister's current research into homelessness concerns using individual-centered methods to capture the temporal biography of homeless men, women and families. On homelessness, he has also published work concerning the logic of homelessness prevention and issues in the epistemology of homelessness policymaking.
