As governments and service agencies across the world grapple with chronic rates of homelessness and housing instability, there is a growing need to understand the value that providing secure, stable housing brings to the lives of people who are homeless and the broader community. The complex nature of homelessness is revealed across a variety of academic fields including planning, pharmacology, urban affairs, housing policy, nutrition, psychiatry, sociology, public health, urban health, and criminology. We undertook a scoping review according to PRISMA-P (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Review and Meta-analysis) that mapped the breadth and scale of the evidence-base and identified themes and gaps. We identified 476 reports and after excluding duplicates and ones that did not relate to our criteria, were left with 100 studies from eight countries. Each of them identified benefits and/or changes that occurred when people experiencing homelessness or housing insecurity transitioned into a secure, stable home. Outcomes measured were distributed across a range of domains including physical and mental health, well-being, mortality rates, criminal justice interaction, service use, and cost-effectiveness. Findings varied by degree but overwhelmingly found improvements in all domains once people were permanently housed. Housing provided a foundation for people to envisage a better life and make plans for the future. As one woman who had fled a violent home was quoted as saying: “housing made everything else possible.” The research identified savings for taxpayers and the wider community once people left homelessness for the stability of a permanent home, even after factoring in the cost of housing and rental help. We found numerous gaps. For example, there was a prevalence of studies that focused on those who are visibly homeless, in particular chronically homeless men with mental illness and/or substance use issues. Much less research looked at women whose patterns of homelessness are more varied and even less at homelessness involving children and families. Women who had left domestic and family violence were investigated in a very small number of studies and sample sizes were small. Few reports undertook the complex task of quantifying and comparing cost savings. Other notable gaps were older women, older people more generally, refugees, recent migrants, veterans, Indigenous people and those with a disability.

随着世界各地的政府和服务机构努力应对无家可归和住房不稳定的长期趋势，越来越需要了解提供安全，稳定的住房为无家可归者和广大社区的生活带来的价值。无家可归的复杂性在包括规划，药理学，城市事务，住房政策，营养，精神病学，社会学，公共卫生，城市卫生和犯罪学在内的许多学术领域得到揭示。我们根据PRISMA-P（系统评价和元分析的首选报告项目）进行了范围界定审查，该报告绘制了证据基础的广度和规模，并确定了主题和差距。我们确定了476份报告，并排除了重复的报告和与我们的标准不相关的报告，剩下来自八个国家的100项研究。他们每个人都确定了当无家可归或住房不安全的人们过渡到安全，稳定的房屋中时​​所发生的收益和/或变化。衡量的结果分布在各个领域，包括身心健康，福祉，死亡率，刑事司法互动，服务使用和成本效益。结果随程度的不同而变化，但是一旦人们被永久性安置，绝大多数人就会发现所有领域的情况都有所改善。住房为人们构想更好的生活和制定未来计划奠定了基础。有人引述一名逃离暴力之家的妇女的话说：“住房使其他一切成为可能。该研究发现，即使人们将永久性住房的稳定性留在无家可归的情况下，即使在考虑了住房和租金帮助成本之后，纳税人和广大社区也可以节省下来。我们发现了许多空白。例如，有大量的研究集中于那些明显无家可归的人，特别是患有精神疾病和/或物质使用问题的长期无家可归的人。很少有研究关注那些无家可归的方式更加多样化的妇女，而涉及儿童和家庭的无家可归者则更少。极少的研究对离开家庭和家庭暴力的妇女进行了调查，样本量很小。很少有报告承担量化和比较成本节省的复杂任务。其他明显的差距是老年妇女，更普遍的老年人，难民，新移民，