Pathways Home Series

Is homelessness a housing problem, or a personal one?

Are the unhoused people in my neighborhood from here, or from somewhere else?

What actually works for reducing homelessness — and what doesn’t?

For those of us in North America, these are familiar questions, driven by the growing number of people living in shelters, in cars, and on the street. After declining for a decade, the number of people experiencing homelessness on a given night in the U.S. increased by 18% from 2018 to 2023, to 653,100. In many communities, the rise has been much faster. Many solutions are proposed and attempted, but few are rooted in an evidence-based understanding of who experiences homelessness and why, or which interventions are most effective. This evidence base exists, but it is not widely read or understood.

In keeping with our mission — translating to a wider audience the knowledge gained from rigorous study of housing markets and policies, and from careful experimentation with different interventions — the UCLA Housing Voice podcast produced an eight-part series on homelessness research; we call it Pathways Home.

Throughout the series, we explore what recent scholarship can tell us about the causes of and solutions to homelessness. We discuss the structural factors that explain why homelessness is so much more prevalent in some regions than others, and the personal reasons that some people fall into homelessness and others don’t, and what their experiences are like. We examine the different populations who experience homelessness, from families to single adults to those suffering from mental illness, and what the highest-quality, real-world research identifies as effective interventions for each. Finally, we conclude with two conversations that tie it all together: a review of efforts that led to a 50% reduction in U.S. veteran homelessness over a 10-year period, followed by a summary of key themes, takeaways, and insights.

The Pathways Home series originally aired from November 2023 to March 2024. Each episode, including a transcript and links to additional resources, is listed below. You can also find Pathways Home and the entire UCLA Housing Voice podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and anywhere else podcasts are available. For questions or comments, you can contact Shane Phillips at shanephillips@ucla.edu.