Homelessness Comes to School by Murphy Joseph F.;Tobin Kerri J.; & Kerri Tobin

Author:Murphy, Joseph F.;Tobin, Kerri J.; & Kerri Tobin
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 1051651
Publisher: Corwin Press
Published: 2011-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

Emergency Shelters

The provision of emergency shelter for homeless families is essential. (McChesney, 1992, p. 253)

Homeless policy has faltered most fundamentally because of a well-intentioned but misguided focus on emergency shelter as the primary goal … (Nunez, 1994b, p. 43)

Temporary housing, most often in the form of emergency shelters, is emphasized in the McKinney-Vento Act and is the “primary mechanism for providing direct services to homeless families and children” (Solarz, 1992, p. 282) and single homeless adults (McChesney, 1990). Emergency shelters are usually run by community organizations or faith-based groups and provide “a temporary haven for families to ‘re-group’; determine how best to address economic, educational, and health issues that have contributed to their homelessness; and move to stable, permanent housing” (NCFH, 2009, p. 35). Medcalf (2008) describes emergency shelters as places that provide “a clean environment to sleep, humane care, some meals, and referrals to other agencies” (p. 104). But not all emergency shelters are the same (Dworsky, 2008). In their 1995 report, Rog, Holupka, and McCombs-Thornton (1995) show that “emergency shelters are a heterogeneous lot, ranging greatly in capacity, staffing patterns, types of service provided, and resident restrictions … there are no clear categories or types of shelters” (p. 502). In addition, shelters often vary in physical structure. Many emergency shelters for individuals are simply large halls filled with beds (Ropers, 1988). Others, particularly those designed for families, consist of separate rooms or apartments. Homeless people are also sometimes placed in Single Room Occupancy (SRO) hotels, often referred to as welfare hotels (Ropers, 1998; Williams, 2003).

Unfortunately, emergency shelters are believed by many analysts to be insufficient to meet the needs of individuals and families experiencing homelessness (Kiesler, 1991). One problem with shelters is that they are often crowded, chaotic, and stress-producing, particularly for families with children (Nunez, 1994b). Personal safety is a concern for many residents (Anooshian, 2005; Karabanow, 2004; Shlay & Rossi, 1992). Many emergency shelters allow residents to spend only the night, requiring them to leave early in the morning, taking all of their possessions with them, and return in the evening for readmission. When residents are permitted to stay more than one night, there are usually limits on the number of nights they can stay (Shinn & Weitzman, 1996).

Another problem is lack of emergency shelter capacity. Despite increases in funding through the Emergency Shelter Grant Program (part of the McKinney-Vento Act) and a 200% increase in shelter capacity between 1988 and 1996 (Burt et al., 2001; Foscarinis, 1996), funding remains “woefully inadequate” (National League of Cities, 2004, p. 197), and many shelters have to turn people away. In 1997, the Child Welfare League found that one-fourth of family requests for emergency shelter were turned down due to lack of space (as cited in Markward & Biros, 2001). Burt and colleagues reported in 2001 that the average rate of availability of shelter housing was 178 units per 10,000 people in poverty nationwide (p. 276). A 2001 study of U.S. cities found that 37% of all requests for

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