IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/aph/ajpbhl/19908091049-1052_3.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Homeless and housed families in Los Angeles: A study comparing demographic, economic, and family function characteristics

Author

Listed:
  • Wood, D.
  • Haldez, B.
  • Hayashi, T.
  • Shen, A.

Abstract

We studied 196 homeless and 194 housed poor families in Los Angeles, California to gain an understanding of events that precipitate family homelessness. Both homeless and housed poor mothers averaged 29 years old and were accompanied by two or three children. Three-fourths of both the homeless and housed families had income below the poverty level, and both groups expended almost two-thirds of their income on housing. Mothers in homeless families more commonly reported spousal abuse (35 vs 16 percent), child abuse (28 vs 10 percent), drug use (43 vs 30 percent), or mental health problems (14 vs 6 percent) and weaker support networks. Homeless mothers more commonly came from homes where their parents abused drugs or alcohol (49 vs 34 percent) or more commonly lived outside the home or in foster care (35 vs 25 percent). Homelessness was reported as due primarily to economic pressures of housing costs, but personal and family problems frequently played a contributing role, especially for single parent families. Burdens of increasing housing costs and family dysfunction among housed poor families place many at risk for homelessness.

Suggested Citation

  • Wood, D. & Haldez, B. & Hayashi, T. & Shen, A., 1990. "Homeless and housed families in Los Angeles: A study comparing demographic, economic, and family function characteristics," American Journal of Public Health, American Public Health Association, vol. 80(9), pages 1049-1052.
  • Handle: RePEc:aph:ajpbhl:1990:80:9:1049-1052_3
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. repec:pri:crcwel:wp12-03-ff is not listed on IDEAS
    2. Marah A. Curtis & Hope Corman & Kelly Noonan & Nancy E. Reichman, 2012. "Life Shocks and Homelessness," Working Papers 1374, Princeton University, School of Public and International Affairs, Center for Research on Child Wellbeing..
    3. Julie A. Lam & Robert Rosenheck, 1999. "Social Support and Service Use Among Homeless Persons With Serious Mental Illness," International Journal of Social Psychiatry, , vol. 45(1), pages 13-28, March.
    4. Alexandra Kröll & Oliver Farhauer, 2016. "Examining homelessness in Germany: The impact of regional housing market conditions on homelessness in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany," Papers in Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 95, pages 51-69, March.
    5. Alexandra Kröll & Oliver Farhauer, 2012. "Examining the Roots of Homelessness - The Impact of Regional Housing Market Conditions and the Social Environment on Homelessness in Germany," ERSA conference papers ersa12p370, European Regional Science Association.
    6. repec:pri:crcwel:wp10-05-ff is not listed on IDEAS
    7. Kim Hopper, 1992. "Counting the Homeless," Evaluation Review, , vol. 16(4), pages 376-388, August.
    8. Kröll, Alexandra & Farhauer, Oliver, 2012. "Examining the roots of homelessness: The impact of regional housing market conditions and the social environment on homelessness in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany," IAB-Discussion Paper 201213, Institut für Arbeitsmarkt- und Berufsforschung (IAB), Nürnberg [Institute for Employment Research, Nuremberg, Germany].
    9. Curtis, Marah A. & Corman, Hope & Noonan, Kelly & Reichman, Nancy E., 2010. "Effects of child health on housing in the urban U.S," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 71(12), pages 2049-2056, December.
    10. Marah A. Curtis & Amanda B. Geller, 2010. "Housing Insecurity among Urban Fathers," Working Papers 1231, Princeton University, School of Public and International Affairs, Center for Research on Child Wellbeing..
    11. Marah Curtis & Hope Corman & Kelly Noonan & Nancy Reichman, 2013. "Life Shocks and Homelessness," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 50(6), pages 2227-2253, December.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:aph:ajpbhl:1990:80:9:1049-1052_3. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Christopher F Baum (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.apha.org .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.