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By The Numbers
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Number of times the Alliance's Data and Policy Update on homelessness among veterans was "retweeted".
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The Alliance's Homelessness Research Institute (HRI) is pleased to send the Fall 2009 edition of the Quarterly Research Newsletter. This issue focuses on homelessness among veterans and features an Expert Q&A with Robert Rosenheck, Professor of Psychiatry, Epidemiology, and Public Health at Yale and member of the Alliance's Research Council.
You will also find a summary of the key findings of the 2008 Data and Policy Update of the Alliance's 2007 report on homelessness among veterans, Vital Mission, as well as the regular research newsletter features: Policy-Driven Research, Interactive Map, and By The Numbers.
Only those who have signed up to receive the Quarterly Research Newsletter are receiving this mailing. If this was forwarded to you or if you are reading this on our website and want to receive the newsletter by e-mail, click here to add "Research Newsletter - Quarterly" as one of your subscriptions.
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Feature: Update on Homelessness Among Veterans
On Veterans Day 2009, the Alliance released a data and policy update of its report Vital Mission: Ending Homelessness Among Veterans. The update is based on newly-obtained information provided by the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) and provides new national and state-by-state counts of homeless veterans. In addition, and for the first time in the Vital Mission series, the report includes data on the demographics of homeless veterans receiving services from the VA.
The report finds that the decrease in homeless veterans from 154,000 in 2007 to 131,000 in 2008 is the result of ongoing refinement of the methodology that the VA uses to estimate the homeless veteran population. At 58 homeless veterans per 10,000 veterans, the rate of homelessness among veterans is more than double the rate of homelessness in the general population. The demographic analysis reveals that the age and race/ethnicity distribution of the homeless veteran population is very similar to that of the overall homeless population. And while the vast majority of veterans served by VA homeless programs are male, the increasing representation of female veterans among the younger veteran population means that female veterans will increasingly be represented among the homeless veteran population.
The report also serves as a policy update and calls for the creation of a prevention and rapid re-housing program to prevent or quickly end homelessness among veterans, as well as the continued expansion of the HUD-VASH program for those veterans with severe, permanent disabilities.
Click here to read the entire report.
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Interactive Map & Table: Homelessness Veterans by State
 As a part of the update of the Vital Mission report on homelessness among veterans, HRI released an interactive map and table that contain state-by-state data on homelessness among veterans. Click here to view the Interactive Map.
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Expert Q&A with Robert Rosenheck, MD
 Robert Rosenheck, MD is Professor of Psychiatry, Epidemiology, and Public Health at Yale and has served as Director of the Department of Veterans Affairs Northeast Program Evaluation Center. He is the author of numerous studies concerning the mental health and well-being of homeless persons, in general, and homeless veterans, in particular. He has been a member of the Research Council since its inception and joined us for an expert Q&A on homelessness among veterans. Click here to see a list of his selected publications.
Alliance: You've been researching homeless veterans for over 2 decades. What are the most pressing questions about homeless veterans that still need to be answered?
Rosenheck: The VA has conducted 9 large outcome studies on over 4,000 homeless veterans and we know that housing subsidies or transitional housing supports, supported by case management, is effective in helping people move out of homelessness, but we have had less success in improving mental health, substance abuse, and employment outcomes. Application of effective mental health treatments to the homeless is an area of promising research that deserves further attention.
Alliance: There is a lot of interest in how the VA and other systems will serve the increasing number of female combat veterans. What are some of the challenges faced in serving female veterans?
Rosenheck: VA established several specialized programs both for homeless female veterans and for women exposed to traumatic stress, the Women's Stress Disorder Treatment Teams. Evaluation data show the effectiveness of both programs. See the following studies on the effectiveness of the two programs:
Desai RA, Harpaz-Rotem I, Najavits LM, Rosenheck RA. (2008). Impact of the seeking safety program on clinical outcomes among homeless female veterans with psychiatric disorders. Psychiatric Services, 59, 996-1004.
Fontana AF and Rosenheck RA. (2006). Treatment of Female Veterans with Posttraumatic Stress Disorder: The Role of Comfort in a Predominantly Male Environment.Psychiatric Quarterly, 77, 55-67.
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Policy-Driven Research: Poverty and Affordable Housing
The recent economic crisis has prompted research on economic indicators at the national, state, and local level. The two studies highlighted in "Policy-Driven Research" this quarter focus on two principle concerns in the field of homelessness research: poverty and housing affordability.
Comparing Poverty MeasuresEarlier this month, the Center for Law and Social Policy (CLASP) released the report, Measure by Measure: The Current Poverty Measure v. the National Academy of Sciences Measures. The report is a national and state-by-state analysis of the current and proposed measures of poverty. The current federal poverty measure was developed in the 1960s, and is based on a calculation of three times a household's food budget - at the time the largest component of a household budget. The need for an updated measure has long been recognized, and the CLASP report compares the current measure with two alternate measures developed by the National Academy of Science (NAS) to better reflect contemporary household spending patterns and to account for geographical differences in cost of living. They found that using the alternate poverty definition increases the poverty rate and that geographical cost of living adjustment increases the poverty rate in states with higher housing costs. Click here to for the full report.
Evaluating Housing PricesIn August, the Center for Economic Policy Research and the National Low Income Housing Coalition released Hitting Bottom: An Updated Analysis of Rents and the Price of Housing in 100 Metropolitan Areas, which analyzed the cost of renting and owning housing in 100 metropolitan area housing markets in the United States. The study focuses on the ratio of the median cost of buying a home to the median annual rent as a measure of housing affordability and housing market stability. As that ratio increases above the 15 to 1 equilibrium point, the housing market becomes less stable and housing less affordable. Beginning in 1995, the ratio of home prices to rents changed dramatically and at the peak in 2007 many markets had ratios of 25 to 1. The new study finds that due to falling home values, the price of housing is returning to its historical relationship with rents in many housing markets. As this happens, it seems that home values will reach bottom and stabilize - which is necessary for increased housing affordability.
Click here to for the full report.
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