Time Magazine: 4 Charts That Explain How People Slide Into Homelessness
People don’t usually become homeless suddenly. It’s often a chutes and ladders process, except with lots of chutes and hardly any ladders. And there’s a period right before they slide into having nowhere to live, during which, many experts believe, a couple of well-placed nets might be able divert them from being forced to sleep on the streets, in their cars, or other places that are not meant as homes.
A large new statewide study done by the University of California, San Francisco Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative takes a closer look at that period just before homelessness, by asking a representative sample of almost 3,200 homeless people from all over the state about the chutes they fell into, and what would have helped. (Marc and Lynne Benioff, funders of the UCSF initiative, are also co-chairs and owners of TIME.) The study, published on June 20, was conducted between October 2021 and November 2022, and is the largest of its kind since the 1990s.
We asked the study’s lead author, Dr. Margot Kushel, a doctor and professor of Medicine at UCSF, to answer four questions about what the study found.