An Economic Theory of Homelessness and Housing

Homeless in America, Homeless in California

“…14 An additiona l concern that applies to both the Burt and S-night data is that there are large disparitie s across the two data sets concerning the number of shelter beds (or for S-night, the number of people residing in shelters) , despite the fact that the surveys were conducted in the same month and year (O'Flaherty, 1996). This is re ected in our samples.…”

“…Although the severity of a city's homeless problem surely affects shelter capacity, other factors may have independent effects on shelter capacity, and these may bias cross-sectional inferences on the determinants of homelessness drawn from these data. For example, O'Flaherty (1996) argues that, if homeless services are normal goods, wealthier cities will allocate more funds for homeless shelters, thus introducing a spurious positive correlation between this measure of homeless and mean household income. Alternatively, wealthier areas may devote fewer resources to homeless shelters (or oppose the opening of shelters through local land-use controls) so as not to attract the users of such services.…”

“…The rst of the authoritative counts of the homeless appeared shortly thereafter (Hombs & Snyder, 1982), followed by compilations of expert opinion by government agencies (U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, 1984), and by estimates produced by university-based scholars (such as Rossi, 1989), nonpro t research centers (Burt & Cohen, 1989), and by the U.S. Bureau of the Census (Taeuber, 1990). These various estimates differ substantially in methodology and de nition, and their interpretation is subject to political manipulation as well as legitimate statistical controversy (Jencks, 1994;O'Flaherty, 1996;Cordray & Pion, 1997). Nevertheless, these estimates do reveal a simple fact: the incidence of homelessness increased substantially during the 1980s and has yet to decline.…”

“…Hence, the number of mentally ill who are "institutionalized," broadly speaking, may not exhibit much of a trend. O'Flaherty (1996) refocuses the debate on housing costs, offering a model of urban housing markets that, when combined with the well-documented increase in income inequality during the 1980s (Reed et al, 1996), points to an increase in the incidence of homelessness.…”

Foundations of Home Ownership Policy - The Implementation of the Financing of Use as an Independent Finance Level

“…Arnott, Davidson and Pines (1983) extend the model by introducing the possibility of modernisation and other investments in existing stock. O'Flaherty (1995) uses the filtering model to explain the existence and growth of homelessness. In Germany, the most important publications on the filtering approach are Eekhoff (1987) and Eekhoff (1993).…”