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156 DOCUMENTS DE TRAVAIL 2008 THE INED RESEARCH ON HOMELESSNESS, 1993-2008 Volume 1 Volume edited by Maryse Marpsat Papers translated from the French by Godfrey Rogers THE INED RESEARCH ON HOMELESSNESS, 1993-2008 Volume 1 Volume edited by Maryse Marpsat Papers translated from the French by Godfrey Rogers INSTITUT NATIONAL D'ETUDES DEMOGRAPHIQUES ETABLISSEMENT PUBLIC SCIENTIFIQUE ET TECHNOLOGIQUE • 133, BOULEVARD DAVOUT 75980 PARIS CEDEX 20 FRANCE TEL. 33 (1) 56 06 20 00 • FAX 33 (1) 56 06 21 99 2 Introduction:The INED research on homelessness (1993-2008) The research on homeless people undertaken by INED began as a part of the larger project dealing with the victims of housing exclusion conducted by the 'homelessness' group of the Conseil National de l'Information Statistique (CNIS, 1996). This research is centred on two quantitative sample surveys to which are added a number of other quantitative and qualitative investigations. The surveys were carried out by the Service des Enquêtes et de l'Observation of INED and are a major methodological innovation in that they led to development of a method for obtaining a representative sample of homeless users of shelters and soup kitchen services. The survey is an adaptation to the French context of the surveys conducted for a number of years in the United States at local and national levels. CNIS and the development of French quantitative research on the homeless CNIS (Conseil National de l'Information Statistique - National Council for Statistical Information) provides a forum for providers and users of official statistics. As coordinator of the French government's statistical activities, it prepares a medium-term program and, within that framework, an annual program incorporating all available data. CNIS plays an advisory role and its opinions are made public. Its authority rests on its broad representativeness, which spans employers’ and trade associations, labor unions, non-profit and government agencies, national and regional political assemblies, universities, and individual experts. At the time of the first INED survey, CNIS comprised approximately 170 members nominated by their respective organizations and appointed by the government for renewable three-year terms. During discussions in the CNIS in 1993 about the medium-term official statistical programme (1994–1998), the question of housing exclusion came under examination. A number of participants, notably representatives of the voluntary organizations, called for a national investigation which would provide qualitative and quantitative data for measuring the scale of the problem and for identifying those currently experiencing housing exclusion and those at risk of becoming victims. The first survey conducted by INED (Institut National d'Etudes Démographiques - National Institute of Population Studies) in Paris of users of services for the homeless was part of this larger project, for which a number of experimental surveys were carried out in France during winter 1994–95 in limited geographical zones. These were: a survey of households threatened with eviction, surveys of the 'literally' homeless, surveys on the housing conditions of low-income families (CNIS, 1996). The survey instrument and related qualitative research The methods used in INED surveys are an adaptation to French conditions of the methods used in the United States by the Research Triangle Institute, the Urban Institute, and lately the Bureau of the Census (Burt, 1992; Dennis & Iachan, 1993; Burt et al., 1999, 2001; Marpsat & Firdion, 1998, 2000). 3 The field the 1995 INED survey aimed to cover is that of the 'literally' homeless, that is individuals spending the night in hostels and shelters for the homeless or in places not intended for habitation (street, staircase, car parks, stations, etc.). Unlike surveys on conventionally housed households, there is no sampling frame for the homeless in the form of a full list of people or addresses from which to draw a representative sample. The sample frame used here is provided by the sites of provision of services to the homeless, such as soup kitchens and shelters, which give a near complete coverage of the target population. The field actually covered is that of people using a shelter or hostel for the homeless or a food distribution service on an average day (or week). Evidence from a number of quantitative and qualitative studies suggest that the field covered does come very close to the target field, since most of those who sleep rough use the mobile distributions of soup and coffee. The main difficulties with this approach are the risk of double counting (someone could be interviewed at more than one site), and the unequal individual probabilities of inclusion in the sample, because of differing levels of service use. The sampling is in two stages. The primary sampling units are the 'site-days', that is, all the services supplied by a given site on any particular day of the survey. The secondary sampling units are the services. The relationship between services and service users is determined by calculation of the weighting, which adjusts for the probability of the user being in the different sampling frames. Adjustment for these differential probabilities requires gathering information about the use that the homeless individuals interviewed make of the services, so as to compute the corrective weightings for which the formula was developed by B. Riandey (INED) and O. Sautory (INSEE). The weightings can be calculated for an average day or for an average week. The survey was conducted during the daytime, in February-March 1995, and involved 591 users of shelters (emergency and long-term) and food distribution (including mobile) services in Paris intra-muros, to which were added the suburban centres that receive people brought from Paris by special transport services. The research was carried out in partnership with voluntary organizations and other agencies working with the homeless. The questionnaire explored a wide range of topics: the demographic characteristics of the subject, service use in the previous week (this section was used to establish the weightings), residential and family history, contact with family, education and occupation, and lastly financial resources. Conducting surveys of the homeless raises ethical and methodological problems (Firdion et al., 1995). Special attention was given to the conditions in which contact was established with the homeless and to the interview procedure, bearing in mind the lack of privacy and difficult living conditions of these individuals. A series of semi-structured interviews was carried out on homeless people before the survey, to assist with hypothesis formulation and questionnaire development, and after the survey in order to check the consistency between questionnaire and interviews, notably in answers to retrospective questions. To improve understanding of the characteristics of the institutional structures in which the survey took place and the impact of this operation on the results obtained, we studied the organization of the voluntary organizations and agencies providing services for the homeless (Soulié, 2000); in addition, a study of the homeless and of their use of services available in Paris was conducted in conjunction with the Plan Urbain. 4 Later French surveys using INED’s methodology A survey dealing specifically with vulnerable young people and their housing problems was carried out by Ined in February-March 1998. But the purpose of these surveys was not only to improve our understanding of the difficulties faced by the homeless and of the processes whereby they became homeless. The surveys also examined the conditions making it possible to conduct these types of surveys and apply them on a larger scale, or to specialized topics. Based on our methods, a survey on homelessness and mental health was conducted in Paris in 1996 (Kovess & Mangin-Lazarus, 1999; Kovess, 2002) and a national survey on homelessness was conducted in January- February 2001 by INSEE (. INSEE’s National Survey on Homelessness This first French national survey on homelessness conducted by our colleagues at INSEE was based on a sample of 4,084 persons using shelters and food distributions. The results are representative of the persons having made use of such services in cities of 20,000 inhabitants and over, at least once in a week of the survey period. The sample was selected in three stages: first, the cities concerned, then the service sites after an exhaustive list of service sites was drawn up in the selected cities, then the people interviewed were selected at random in the sites. The survey (SD2001) was completed by 322 interviewers in 20 (out of 22) regions of continental France, in 80 cities and 846 sites. The first results were published in 2002. Finally, INED conducted a survey on people met by outreach services in three French cities (SI2002), in order to study the coverage of SD2001. Maryse Marpsat Bibliography Brousse, C., Guiot de la Rochère, B., & Massé, E. (2006). L’enquête sans-domicile 2001. INSEE, coll. INSEE-Méthodes, n°116. Burt, M. R. (1992). Practical Methods for Counting Homeless People. Washington, D.C. : Interagency Council for the Homeless and Department of Housing and Urban Development. Burt, M. R., Aron, L. Y., & Lee, E. (2001). Helping America's Homeless: Emergency Shelter or Affordable Housing? Washington, DC: Urban Institute Press. Burt, M. R., Aron, L. Y., Douglas, T., Valente, J., Lee, E., Iwen, B. (1999). Homelessness : Programs and the People they Serve. Findings of the National Survey of Homeless Assistance Providers and Clients.Washington, DC : Urban Institute Press. Conseil National de l’Information Statistique (CNIS). (1996). Pour une meilleure connaissance des sans-abri et de l'exclusion du logement [For a better knowledge of the homeless and victims of social exclusion]. Final Report, Paris, March. Dennis, M. L. & Iachan, R. (1993). A Multiple Frame Approach to Sampling the Homeless and Transient Population. Journal of Official Statistics, 9 (4),747-764. Économie et Statistique (2006). Numéro spécial « sans domicile » (special issue on the 2001 homelessness survey).