Canadian Observatory on Homelessness
The Canadian Observatory on Homelessness is the largest national research institute devoted to homelessness in Canada. The COH is the curator of the Homeless Hub.
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The Canadian Observatory on Homelessness is the largest national research institute devoted to homelessness in Canada. The COH is the curator of the Homeless Hub.
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Author(s): Martha R. Burt, Jill Khadduri, Daniel Gubits
Organization: OPRE
Publication Date: 2016
The study collected data from the families at the time they were recruited in emergency shelters, revealing that these families are often living in deep poverty with significant levels of housing instability, weak work histories, and disabilities affecting both parents and children. The median age of the adults who responded to the survey was 29. Most had either one or two children with them in shelter, and half the families included at least one...
Author(s): Martha R. Burt, Maeve E. Gearing, Marla McDaniel
Organization: Urban Institute
Publication Date: 2016
The Partnership to Demonstrate the Effectiveness of Supportive Housing, funded by the US Department of Health and Human Services, was designed to explore the effects of providing housing and intensive services to high-need families in the child welfare system. Demonstration sites committed to creating new service delivery structures to accomplish their goals, working more intensively than they ever had before with partner agencies, including chil...

Author(s): Mary K. Cunningham, Jennifer Biess, Dina Emam, Martha R. Burt, The Urban Institute
Organization: U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, Office of Policy Development and Research
Publication Date: 2015
Concerned about the increasing risk of homelessness among veterans returning from the recent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, in 2009 Congress authorized the Veterans Homelessness Prevention Demonstration (VHPD), a joint program of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), and the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL). Part of the Obama Administration’s plan to end veteran homelessness by 2016...
Author(s): Martha R. Burt, Carol Pearson, Ann Montgomery
Publication Date: 2007
This article summarizes the findings of a study of community-wide strategies for preventing homelessness among families and single adults with serious mental illness, conducted for the US Department of Housing and Urban Development. The study involved six communities, of which this article focuses on five. A major finding of this study was that it was difficult to identify sites with community-wide strategies, and even harder to find any that mai...
Author(s): Martha R. Burt, Carol L. Pearson, Ann Elizabeth Montgomery
Organization: Prepared for Office of Policy Development and Research, U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, by The Urban Institute and Walter R. McDonald & Associates, Inc.
Publication Date: 2006
This exploratory study identifies communities that have implemented effective and well-targeted communitywide homelessness prevention strategies. The study illustrates these approaches in six communities with the hope that other communities can learn how to carry out similar efforts.
Author(s): Martha R. Burt, Carol Wilkins
Organization: Corporation for Supportive Housing
Publication Date: 2005
This guide is meant to help communities that want or need to do three different but related things: 1) calculate an expected number of homeless people over a year's time when you only have data from a point-in-time (PIT) count; 2) use both PIT information and projections to annual levels of homelessness to figure out how many chronically homeless people you are likely to have, now and in the future; and 3) plan and develop appropriate levels of p...
Author(s): Martha R. Burt, Carol Wilkins
Organization: Corporation for Supportive Housing
Publication Date: 2005
In 2003 the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation awarded CSH $6 million over two years for a Taking Health Care Home Initiative (THCH). CSH is working with states and localities through THCH to demonstrate how they can create supportive housing that ends homelessness for people with chronic health conditions including mental illness, alcohol and chemical dependency, and HIV/AIDS, and how that experience can be replicated on a national scale. This repor...
Author(s): Mike Pergamit, Mary K. Cunningham, Martha R. Burt, Pamela Lee, Brent Howell, Kassie Dumlao Bertumen
Organization: Urban Institute
Publication Date: 2013
Homelessness among unaccompanied youth is a hidden problem: the number of young people who experience homelessness each year is largely unknown. To improve the national response to youth homelessness, policymakers need better data on the magnitude of the problem. Youth Count! is a Federal interagency initiative that aims to improve counts of unaccompanied homeless youth. Nine communities participated in the initiative by expanding their annual ho...
Author(s): Martha R. Burt, Patrick Sharkey
Publication Date: 2002
This report examines the ability of homeless people to get the health care they need. In particular, it asks whether having health insurance increases access to care for homeless people, as it does for the housed population. Within the general rubric of health care we include treatment for physical health, mental health, and substance abuse problems. We look at two types of health insurance, Medicaid and “other” health insurance, which, for t...
Author(s): Martha R. Burt
Publication Date: 2004
Most stakeholders interested in ending chronic homelessness are familiar with the recently published cost avoidance analysis conducted for the New York/New York Initiative hereafter, “NY/NY analysis.” The NY/NY analysis looked at the NY/NY Initiative, which placed homeless individuals with serious mental illness (SMI) in a variety of permanent supportive housing (PSH) arrangements, and helped them stay there. It examined three issues—changed use...
Author(s): Tia Martinez, Martha R. Burt
Publication Date: 2006
This analysis examined the impact of permanent supportive housing on the use of acute care public health services by homeless people with mental illness, substance use disorder, and other disabilities. This study found that eighty-one percent of residents remained in permanent supportive housing for at least one year. Housing placement significantly reduced the percentage of residents with an emergency department visit (53 to 37 percent), the ave...
Author(s): Martha R. Burt
Publication Date: 2005
CSH is working with states and localities through the Taking Health Care Home Initiative (THCH) to demonstrate how they can create supportive housing that ends homelessness for people with chronic health conditions including mental illness, alcohol and chemical dependency, and HIV/AIDS, and how that experience can be replicated on a national scale. THCH's primary focus is on systems change at the state and local levels. The goal is to create syst...
Author(s): Clare Nolan, Cathy Broeke, Michelle Magee, Martha R. Burt
Publication Date: 2004
This report assists the Charles Schwab Foundation in understanding the impact of its innovative approach to meeting the long-term needs of formerly homeless families in permanent supportive housing. This report presents baseline findings from initial interviews with sixty families that were conducted between November 2003 and January 2004, as well as descriptions of four Family Permanent Supportive Housing (FPSH) sites included in the study samp...
Author(s): Martha R. Burt, Nancy Pindus, Jeffrey Capizzano
Publication Date: 2000
This paper focuses on the ways in which the varied programs and services that comprised this social safety net worked for low-income families with children in late 1996 and early 1997, just before implementation of major federal welfare reforms. By “worked,” we mean how easy or difficult it would have been for families on welfare— and for nonwelfare, working poor families—to get the services they needed from safety net programs. The crux of this...
Author(s): Martha R. Burt
Publication Date: 1998
This paper summarizes the latest and/or most comprehensive data on important characteristics of homeless people. It looks at the demographics and distribution of homeless people among communities of different types, as documented by a range of research methodologies in various jurisdictions and nationwide. It also examines how characteristics may differ depending on the locations in which a study looked for people to include, and factors that see...
Author(s): Carol Wilkins, Martha R. Burt, Danna Mauch
Publication Date: 2012
In 2014, most homeless people will become Medicaid-eligible under the Affordable Care Act (ACA) of 2010 based on their low incomes. Many homeless people have complex physical and behavioral health conditions for which they seek care through frequent use of emergency rooms and inpatient hospitalization, at considerable cost in public resources. With appropriate supportive services, inappropriate use of crisis health services can be avoided. Med...
Author(s): Martha R. Burt, Carol Wilkins
Publication Date: 2012
In 2014, most homeless people will become Medicaid-eligible under the Affordable Care Act (ACA) of 2010 based on their low incomes. Many homeless people have complex physical and behavioral health conditions for which they seek care through frequent use of emergency rooms and inpatient hospitalization, at considerable cost in public resources. With appropriate supportive services, inappropriate use of crisis health services can be avoided. Med...
Author(s): Martha R. Burt, Kenneth M. Carpenter, Sam Hall
Publication Date: 2010
Homeless people in HUD-funded shelters and transitional and permanent supportive housing programs often need benefits and services from welfare, health, mental health, and other mainstream systems to help them stabilize their lives. Many find it hard to access these systems, however. As HUD homeless-related resources have shifted from 60 to 33 percent going to services in the past five years, this study's central question was how communities have...
Author(s): Martha R. Burt
Publication Date: 2010
This report addresses two questions: 1) What happens to homeless families who "graduate" from HUD-funded transitional housing (TH)? and 2) What factors affect housing, employment, and children's well-being after TH? Project sites included Cleveland/Cuyahoga County, Detroit, Houston/Harris County, San Diego City and County, and Seattle/King County. 195 families were interviewed as they left TH, with 179 (92 percent) completing 12...
Author(s): Martha R. Burt, Janine M. Zweig, K. Schlichter, Cynthia Andrews
Publication Date: 2000
The purpose of this evaluation is to assess whether STOP's financial support for direct victim services offered through private nonprofit victim service (VS) agencies helps victims of domestic violence and sexual assault improve their safety and well-being and work successfully with legal system and other relevant agencies.