LogFAQs > #976513838

Problem with reports like these is that "the homeless" is not a monolithic group of people where one solution is going to fix it. There's always been a portion of the homeless population that are victims of circumstance and only need a little help to get back on their feet. Many homeless solution programs have this tendency to launch pilot programs like these where they screen out the, for the lack of a better term, undesirables, then other people latch on the summarized results as some sort of magical fix to the homeless problem.

Here's their eligibility criteria for participation in the study:

Eligibility criteria for DBIP participation included being 18 years old or older, accessing services
from one of the partner agencies, not having severe and unaddressed mental health or
substance use needs, and experiencing homelessness, as defined by DBIP. DBIP intentionally
adopted a broad definition of homelessness which includes individuals without fixed, regular,
and adequate nighttime residence, which includes the following: living in motels, hotels,
camping grounds due to lack of alternative accommodations, sharing housing due to loss of
housing, economic hardship, or similar reason, living in cars, parks, public spaces, abandoned
buildings, living in emergency shelters or transitional shelters, people whose nighttime
residence is a public or private place not designed for or ordinarily used as a regular sleeping
accommodation.

I also question the methodology when less than 60% of the participants of the program completed the surveys from which the analysis is made. It's a pretty clear case of survivorship bias that they don't do anything to address in their findings which leads to some wonky results like the C group (the one that received the least) doing better in several categories.