Chronic Homelessness

The New York City Department of Homeless Services (DHS) is committed to reducing homelessness through prevention efforts, providing short-term shelter, and ultimately connecting individuals with permanent housing. Chronic homelessness refers to unaccompanied individuals with a disabling condition who have been continuously homeless for more than a year or have been temporarily homeless four or more times within the last three years. These individuals often have both mental and physical health issues that complicate the ability to maintain stable employment and housing. Many different factors contribute to chronic homelessness, but limited information is available revealing characteristics unique to the chronically homeless population. In order to better serve this population, DHS enlisted a Capstone team to design and implement a survey identifying distinctive characteristics of chronically homeless individuals. Survey participants included randomly-selected, single, adult men from New York City shelters. Based on an analysis of the survey's findings, the team prescribed a series of programmatic and policy recommendations targeted at reducing the number of frequent shelter users.