Session: Measuring Homelessness and Housing Stability across the Lifespan: Rigorous Inquiry Requires Methodological Democracy (Society for Social Work and Research 31st Annual Conference)

In this symposium, we will present four papers that explore measurement of homelessness and housing insecurity across the lifespan, and the related implications of each for our collective understanding of empirical rigor on this topic. The first presentation team will share about a recent needs assessment of youth and young adult homelessness in Utah – and the clear discordance between quantitative and qualitative data on youth homelessness – calling for both epistemological and methodological complexity in measuring youth and young adult homelessness in Utah and across the United States. The secondteam will share their research on a shallow subsidy pilot program for older adults in Central Ohio and the implications of the need for a housing stability measure that is validated with older adults. The third team will share findings from a point-in-time survey conducted across an academic medical system in Lexington, Kentucky, conceptualizing a more nuanced and intentional approach to assessing the housing insecurity of hospitalized patients. Findings have implications for future research related to understanding how experiences of multiple forms or specific types of housing insecurity may exacerbate barriers to care and health care outcomes for hospitalized patients. Lastly, the fourth team will share findings from individual- and network-level survey measures of “couch-surfing" collected from young adults experiencing homelessness in Los Angeles, California and St. Louis, Missouri, and qualitative interviews with young adults in Los Angeles. Findings underscore the need for a more robust conceptualization and operationalization of couch-surfing in order to advance structural responses to youth homelessness.