Housing Risks and Homelessness Among the Urban Elderly

This groundbreaking book presents the latest research on homelessness among the urban elderly based on a comprehensive study of older people from a city emergency service agency in Chicago. Interviews with these elderly clients are analyzed to show how housing-related problems and substandard residential conditions lead to homelessness, institutionalization, and even death. In this timely volume, a variety of living situations that can lead to homelessness are examined, including those persons in need of temporary shelter, those living in deplorable housing conditions, those living in SROs (single room occupancy hotels), those who have always been homeless, and those who have never been without shelter but are without a permanent residence. Areas of risk for homelessness among the urban elderly are identified by statistical comparisons illustrated with specific case descriptions. Practical urban housing options providing professionals with solutions to housing problems are evaluated, in particular the more extensive use of SROs as a successful housing alternative for urban elderly. Issues of concern to policymakers and practitioners serving the elderly and the mentally ill, such as urban planners, outreach agencies, protective services, and other programs concerned with housing, will benefit from this vital research. Housing Risks and Homelessness Among the Urban Elderly ties together urban social policy with the resulting human consequences, creating an invaluable resource for researchers and academics, service planners, social administrators and community care officials. Filling a void in the current research literature, this informative volume explores avenues whereby elders lose their homes in the community, identifies circumstances surrounding their use of shelters for the homeless, and recognizes the range of social supports and services that preclude homelessness, all in order that homelessness among the urban elderly might be decreased and prevented.