No abstract

Transitional living programs (TLPs) are a housing intervention authorized by the Runaway and Homeless Youth Act to provide services for older youth experiencing homelessness. Preparing youth for independence is a chief program outcome for TLPs across the country. The findings of this qualitative study, with 32 former participants in TLP services, suggest that the primacy of this outcome may warrant reexamination. A dominant focus on the achievement of independence as a determination of program success does not (a) capture the most important roles TLPs serve from the perspective of youth and (b) account for the possible structural roots of youth homelessness in the United States that may prevent young people from maintaining stability after exit.

The need for systems/cultural level change addressing intractable and escalating social and environmental challenges is well established. One of the attractions of behavior analysis for many has been the potential to have an impact on such challenges (certainly since Skinner, 1948;1953). Issues like police-community relations, violence-from neighborhood to global levels, economic inequality, and climate change have been only minimally addressed within behavior analysis, despite the oft repeated mantra that they are all at root behavioral. Disciplines determine the scope of their interests; behavior analysis and behavioral systems analysis have

Each year, an estimated 4,200,000 unaccompanied youth ages 13 to 25 experience homelessness in the United States. The threats facing young people in housing crisis are many, and their potential impacts, harrowing. Youth are at high risk for physical and sexual victimization, mental and physical illness, and involvement with the criminal legal system and face serious threats to their education, their future economic stability, and their lives. Despite these dangerous consequences, the response to this issue in the United States continues to lack urgency, meaningful investment, and empirical support. This article critically examines the current approach to services for youth in situations of homelessness in the United States. Directly informed by the lived experiences of young people, it calls for a shift in understanding of the nature and scope of the problem and, consequently, the practice and policy strategies being implemented to address it. Specifically, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s definition of homelessness, along with corresponding procedures that further limit access to services, is examined in a call to change course in response to youth homelessness.

The need for systems/cultural level change addressing intractable and escalating social and environmental challenges is well established. One of the attractions of behavior analysis for many has been the potential to have an impact on such challenges (certainly since Skinner, 1948;1953). Issues like police-community relations, violence-from neighborhood to global levels, economic inequality, and climate change have been only minimally addressed within behavior analysis, despite the oft repeated mantra that they are all at root behavioral. Disciplines determine the scope of their interests; behavior analysis and behavioral systems analysis have