Contrasting Traditions in Homelessness Research between the UK and US

While in the US a large volume of quantitative impact studies on homelessness has been generated over many years, homelessness researchers in the UK have tended to be concerned, at least until recently, with more qualitative and conceptual forms of exploration and evaluation. This contrast between the US and UK extant homelessness literatures can be traced back to the different research traditions that have emerged over the years on opposite sides of the Atlantic (Fitzpatrick and Christian, 2006). In the UK, applied housing studies specialists have tended to dominate academic research on homelessness, with the important role played by domestic legislation in tackling homelessness in the UK also meaning that there is a strong tradition of socio-legal scholarship in this field (Cowan, 2019). More theoretical contributions in the UK, as in the US, often emerge from urban geography or sociology perspectives (Lancione, 2013), although a sharply contrasting conceptual approach within the UK now sees mainstream moral philosophy applied to the ethical challenges and dilemmas that abound in homelessness policy and practice (Watts et al, 2017). Health-orientated research on homelessness has generally been relatively marginal to the policy debate in the UK, not least because it is often very narrowly focused (for example on oral health or blood-borne viruses among specific homeless subpopulations). That said, there is now increasing engagement from UK-based public health specialists in the complex needs of homeless people who face compounding problems of substance misuse, mental ill-health and/or involvement in the criminal justice system (Aldridge et al, 2018; Luchenski et al, 2018). In the US, by contrast, psychological, sociological and medical perspectives have long played a central role in homelessness research, along with significant contributions from social policy and economics scholars. The prominence of these clinical perspectives, and a more quantitative approach in the social sciences more generally, has engendered a research tradition heavily slanted toward statistical research and policy and programme evaluation. Here we explore the UK and US traditions with a view to identifying how new opportunities presented by developments in the field might help forge a path to better homelessness research and, more importantly, better homelessness responses.