Changing the paradigm of family homelessness

ABSTRACT

Policymakers have used the same basic paradigms year after year with minimal success in preventing family homelessness. This policy brief promotes the view that child and family homelessness can overwhelmingly be prevented but only if a different paradigm is employed. The new paradigm would focus on the integration of public health, human rights, human dignity, and trauma prevention.

KEYWORDS:

• Family homelessness
• paradigm
• policy
• human rights
• dignity
• trauma

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes on contributors

Yvonne Vissing is a Professor of Healthcare Studies at Salem State University and the Founding Director of the Salem State University Center for Childhood and Youth Studies. She was appointed Policy Chair for the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child Policy Center; is a former National Institute of Mental Health Post-Doctoral Fellow, Whiting Fellow, and UConn Democracy and Dialogue Fellow; and was a long-term board member of the National Coalition for the Homeless. She is the author of the book Out of Sight, Out of Mind (University of Kentucky Press), which focuses on hidden family homelessness.

Diane Nilan is the founder and president of HEAR US Inc. She has spent the last 15 years traveling backroads chronicling family and youth homelessness. She has three decades of experience running and managing homeless shelters and advocating for improved state and federal homeless policies. She has filmed and produced two award-winning documentaries — My Own Four Walls and On the Edge: Family Homelessness in America — and wrote the book Crossing the Line: Taking Steps to End Homelessness.