Housing the Homeless by Jon Erickson Charles Wilhelm

Author:Jon Erickson, Charles Wilhelm [Jon Erickson, Charles Wilhelm]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Sociology, General, Urban
ISBN: 9781351514927
Google: HR4uDwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2017-07-12T03:27:08+00:00

The Sample and Field Work

A listing of all room numbers or bed numbers available for rent or free was obtained by calling on the management of each hotel, rooming house, mission or other place of Skid Row residence. This listing comprised the universe for sampling. A sample was drawn by taking every 15th bed (room) in the hotels and rooming houses and every 10th name in the missions. At the jail and Cook County Hospital, the complete roster of inmates was reviewed. Every 10th man committed from the Monroe Street Station and every 10th patient at the hospital with a Skid Row address were included in the sample. A quota of 10 men sleeping out was set to provide for those who were sleeping in doorways, under bridges, and so on, and most of them were interviewed as they came to the Reading Room to clean up. (Missions, the jail, and hospital were sampled at a greater rate in order to gain more precise data for the truly “down and out” population.)1

As each hotel was taken up as a field assignment, the names of the men registered for the sample rooms or beds on the day interviewing began there were taken as the list of persons to be interviewed. Also included in the sample were all transients or new customers who rented one of the vacant sample sleeping spaces during a 24-hour period following the taking of the names from the register. Intensive efforts were made to interview as promptly as possible the men whose names comprised the sample. Most transient men were interviewed either on the day the sampling began or on the following morning. The hotel management usually was very cooperative in helping the interviewers determine which rooms were occupied by “regular customers” who could be counted on to be around for several days, and which were occupied by the comparative newcomers or transients. The more permanent residents were interviewed within the week following the drawing of the sample. The procedure was relaxed from strict probability sampling rules to permit the substitution of a few new transients, drawn at random, for transients who could not be contacted during the 24-hour period and who were lost through no fault of the interviewers who had no opportunity to face them, explain the purpose of the survey, and ask for an interview. All refusals and break-offs were counted as irreplaceable losses.

It was quickly discovered that it was out of the question to interview men in their cubicles. Cubicle walls “have ears,” and the interview disturbed other men who were trying to sleep in the daytime. Also, some interviewers acquired bedbugs or lice by sitting on the bed or chair in the cubicle, so other arrangements were made. Small portable interviewing booths, made of collapsible screens such as are used in homes were set up in a remote corner of the hotel lobby. Where it was impossible to use the screens, interviews were taken in strict privacy, out of the earshot of other men, to the greatest extent permitted by the circumstances.

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