Navigating Experiences of Housing Stability and Transitions Among Lgbtqia+ Young Adults: Development of an Online Illustrative Life History Calendar

Background and Purpose: LGBTQIA+ adolescents and young adults are disproportionately affected by housing insecurity, facing 2.2 times higher risk of becoming unhoused compared to their peers. Their housing trajectories are often shaped by complex and overlapping systems that too often fail to provide affirming or adequate support. Experiences of rejection, institutional neglect, or system involvement create unique vulnerability pathways, particularly for transgender and gender-expansive youth. Despite the high rates of housing instability, there remain significant gaps in understanding the turning points that lead to stability versus ongoing crisis. Current research focuses primarily on risk factors and causes, but little is known about protective experiences or resilience narratives from the perspective of LGBTQIA+ youth themselves.

Life History Calendars (LHCs) are a common and validated retrospective data collection tool for exploring housing trajectories. However, traditional LHCs are critiqued for having high participant burden which can fracture the interviewer-interviewee relationship, especially among LGBTQIA+ young people whose lives diverge from a Western cis-hetero-normative and rigid construction of the life course prescribed by LHCs. Qualitative approaches to LHCs have been offered as a solution for young people, involving the illustration of timelines. In these formats, the researcher sets the domains of interest and minimal time, date, and event information and guides the research participant as they create a timeline. This approach, however, is resource-intensive, involving in-person interviews and the management, storage, and security of large poster-size LHCs. Further, there are limits to engaging in interviews with participants nationally, including those in rural or isolated locations.

Methods: This study details the process to fill those gaps through the development and piloting of an innovative, online illustrative LHC to capture lived experiences from youth who have experienced housing insecurity but have since reached relative stability. This method allows for a deeper exploration of systemic failures, support networks, and personal meaning-making during critical periods of instability and transition. Development of the template which guided the illustrative online tool included an iterative pilot phase, collection of feasibility, acceptability, and usability data, and refinement of the tool.

Results: This study results in a validated protocol and whiteboard template for virtual LHC qualitative mapping, offering a scalable solution for national longitudinal research with marginalized populations. Results also include whiteboard security discussion protocols and interview protocols to support participants’ LHC mapping.

Expected results of an iterative pilot phase will be a fully formed zoom whiteboard template and protocol, further refined by feasibility, acceptability, and usability information from using the tool with young adult participants before piloting with a national sample of LGBTQIA+ adolescents.

Conclusions: The virtual LHC tool will offer a developmentally appropriate, accessible tool to gain a better understanding of complex housing and service trajectories among LGBTQIA+ young adults. Protocol and testing will contribute to the development of a platform to visualize and give voice to nonlinear housing pathways giving critical insights into intervention windows and protective factors