ABSTRACT

This paper uses a large administrative dataset providing 105,149 daily observations on 3,176 youth aged between 18 and 24 years using emergency homeless shelters from January 1, 2014, to December 31, 2019, in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. Using k-mean cluster analysis we classify youth who use emergency homeless shelters by their intensity of shelter use. In Calgary, most youth use homeless shelters as a temporary and infrequent refuge when housing is lost. For these youth, shelters are an effective and relatively inexpensive approach for helping them resolve their homelessness. A significant number, however, rely on shelters for much longer stays. For these youth, shelters are ineffective and expensive responses to their homelessness. To understand how youth are changing their use of shelters over time, we introduce time series measuring first admissions and readmissions to shelters. We show that how youth use shelters, and how that use has changed over time, differs for youth who self-identify as Indigenous, Caucasian and visible minority.

摘要

本文使用了一个大型行政数据集，从 2014 年 1 月 1 日到 2019 年 12 月 31 日，在加拿大阿尔伯塔省卡尔加里，使用紧急无家可归者收容所，对 3,176 名 18 至 24 岁的青年进行了每日 105,149 次观察。使用 k 均值聚类分析，我们根据使用避难所的强度对使用紧急无家可归者收容所的青年进行分类。在卡尔加里，大多数年轻人在失去住房时使用无家可归者收容所作为临时和不经常的避难所。对于这些年轻人来说，庇护所是帮助他们解决无家可归问题的一种有效且相对便宜的方法。然而，相当多的人依靠庇护所来停留更长的时间。对于这些年轻人来说，庇护所是对他们无家可归的无效且昂贵的回应。要了解随着时间的推移，年轻人如何改变他们对庇护所的使用方式，我们引入了时间序列来衡量收容所的首次入院和再入院。我们展示了青年如何使用庇护所，以及这种使用如何随着时间的推移而发生变化，对于自我认同为土著、高加索和可见少数群体的青年来说是不同的。