Smith is an associate professor of public affairs at the Daniel J. Evans School of Public Affairs at the University of Washington. He is also editor of Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly. His recent publications examine the transformation of social services, new approaches to policy analysis, systems change in workforce-development programs, and the government-nonprofit relationship. His ongoing research focuses on the role of religion in nonprofit service agencies and the restructuring of social services in advanced industrial countries. Email: smithsr@u.washington.edu.Michael R. Sosin is the Emily Klein Gidwitz Professor at the School of Social Service Administration, The University of Chicago. He also is the editor of Social Service Review and an affiliate of numerous research centers. Recent publications examine the organization of managed care in outpatient substance abuse programs, the role of organizational factors in service intensity, and the evaluation of treatment programs. He also is continuing his investigations of the role of religion in nonprofit social service organizations.Although some recent literature suggests religious social service agencies can help governments reach important social program goals, the true social organization and services of the agencies remain in dispute. This article interviews officials in the wide class of "faith-related" agencies in two cities to consider two aspects of this issue: the ties or "coupling" of agencies to faith, and the impact of coupling on agency structure and service programming. The results suggest that many sampled agencies are loosely tied to faith in terms of resources, more tightly coupled in terms of authority, and moderately coupled with respect to culture; that certain aspects of service-delivery technology are heavily secularized in many agencies; that faith is more influential in such matters as the agencies' choices of services; and that the larger, potentially more secularized agencies that might be least likely to be characterized as faith based balance differing sets of resources and thereby can more fully deliver services that arguably express faith in action. Given this finding and that most agencies profess a focus on protecting the dignity and rights of clients rather than on individual responsibility or other themes that are stressed by some recent policy proposals, governments need to be extremely selective in funding agencies to promote those proposals' themes.The use of religious agencies in publicly funded social service programs is advocated by politicians, contemporary public policy makers, essayists, ministers, and many lay people. The benefits of religion are touted for dealing with such vexing social problems as poverty, child welfare, juvenile justice, inner city gangs, and drug abuse (

This paper reports on the methods and findings of a six‐month panel study of homeless individuals in a Midwest city. Patterns of homelessness are described, focusing on exits from and returns to homelessness as well as the types of dwellings obtained upon exit. The findings call into question (a) the commonly accepted proposition that homelessness involves the lack of a dwelling and ends as soon as a dwelling is attained, (b) prevalent characterizations of the typical length of homelessness, and (c) the claim that experience with homelessness profoundly alters the probability of a stable escape. Although a minority of individuals were able to locate and retain a dwelling, homelessness was most often part of a pattern of residential instability that also included frequent and relatively brief stays in dwellings.

Twenty homeless people were interviewed about the nature and frequency of their victimization experiences and fear of crime along with their past and current criminal justice involvement. Although this is an exploratory project we have preliminary results which form the basis for more rigorous evaluative studies in the future.

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