I met a person who claims to be “transitioning from homelessness”. This sounds like it may be a term of art. What does it mean? Does it mean that they are still living on the street, but are actively searching for an apartment and a job to pay for it in such a way that they have a real intent to keep the apartment? Or does it mean that they are living in a shelter?
This is in the US, btw.
There’s no formal definition for it. It’s just that “transitioning from homeless” implies an upward trend and access to showers. There’s a pretty strong stigma to being merely “homeless” and people are much more sympathetic if they think you’re improving yourself.
Getting out of a shelter and into a residential program with a bedroom, bathroom, drug and alcohol counseling, chores, and ultimately a job.
They may also be implying membership in a community/civic/religious group which provides “transition services” to homeless people.
Basically, they start by providing access to or information about services to give the homeless person new (or new to them) clothing and personal supplies, laundry services, and bathing facilities.
Then they work with the person to improve job skills and interviewing skills, help them put together a resume, sometimes they even act as a mediator and hire the person themselves (or convince someone else to hire them on the agency’s recommendation) for a while so they have something to list on their resume.
Then they work out affordable housing (again, often paid for entirely or supplied directly by the agency) for the person to stay in, with a time limit on how long the person can stay there for free or at a reduced rate.
They often also offer substance-abuse help, or even require it of participants. Sometimes they also are designed to set the now not-so-homeless person up with a support-network of other recently homed people and others with the same interests or job types, so that there is less chance of the person falling back into homelessness through lack of socialization and assistance.
I have no earthly idea whether or how well the process works, but there seemed to be lots of them appearing in major cities in the past decade or so.
I would imagine with the recession, services and agencies like these are going to be much more used again.
Yes. The problem with homelessness is the vicious circle where you can’t get a job because you’re homeless, and you can’t get a place to live because you have no job/income. ‘Transition’ is very much not a momentary event, and probably requires some sort of halfway-house stage in order to stand a decent chance of working.