This is a new section of the newsletter to share with you all some of the terms, phrases, policies, and other details about homelessness & serving our families that you may not be familiar with. We value your partnership and participation in helping the Durham community end family homelessness, and we pledge to support you in being the best ally that you can be. We are starting broadly – defining homelessness – and will be moving through different terms, topics, and subjects as we go. If you have questions, have requests for our next topic, or would like more information about the featured topic, please submit them here.
Homelessness: in the simplest terms, it is the state of having no home. But the reality is that homelessness is multifaceted, and a simple or single definition fails to capture all the ways a family and community may experience homelessness.
To begin with, there is not a uniform definition of family homelessness in terms of policy (federal, state, and local) and qualification for services. For example, HUD (US Department of Housing and Urban Development) uses a 4-category scale to define homelessness, and this scale is designed to prioritize need and access to services. However, the McKinney-Vento Act, passed in 1987, essentially broadened the definition of homelessness to include all four categories for children and youths, again, to prioritize access to services.
While it is understandable that different qualifiers may be needed to try to ensure equitable distribution of resources, we also know that these qualifiers make it confusing or difficult to quickly access services and opportunities for our guests. Moreover, none of these definitions speak to the systemic inequities that underpin the experience of homelessness, nor the impact of experiencing homelessness. We’ll look at both soon, so that together we can craft a more complete definition of homelessness.