Predicting Staying In or Leaving Permanent Supportive Housing That Serves Homeless People with Serious Mental Illness

One principal assumption underlay the Permanent Housing component when Congress established the Supportive Housing Demonstration Program (and its successor, the Supportive Housing Program) in the Stewart B. McKinney Act: That the combination of permanent community-based housing and the provision of ongoing supportive services to homeless people with disabilities would foster among individuals of that difficult-to-serve population the greatest independence or self-sufficiency possible. A similar concept underlies the Shelter Plus Care (S+C) program established by the National Affordable Housing Act of 1990. The purpose of S+C was to provide rental housing assistance, in connection with supportive services funded from other sources other than this subtitle, to homeless persons with disabilities (primarily persons who are seriously mentally ill, have chronic problems with alcohol, drugs, or both, or have acquired immunodeficiency syndrome and related diseases) and the families of such persons. The third programmatic HUD McKinney-Vento Act permanent housing alternative, although not specifically targeted to a disabled homeless population, does serve a high proportion of homeless people with serious mental illness; in 2001, for example, roughly a third of all adults entering HUD-supported Single Room Occupancy (SRO) units were mentally ill.