Marybeth Shinn
Biographic Data
| ID | 367784 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Marybeth Shinn |
| GIVEN NAMES | Marybeth |
| FAMILY NAME | Shinn |
| SIGNATURE | SHINN M |
| AFFILIATIONS | New York University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-6681-8273 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 76 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 807 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 75 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1978 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 17 |
Learning More From Homeless Point-in-Time Counts
Previous research has found that patterns of sheltered homelessness and characteristics of people who use shelters vary between pointprevalence and period-prevalence tallies, but there are no comparable data for unsheltered homelessness. We derive a three-year period-prevalence measure of unsheltered homelessness from data collected in a point-in-time count, by weighting individuals by the inverse number of months, out of the last 36, that they r…
Pathways Connecting Housing Assistance to Child Well-Being in Families Experiencing Homelessness
What Would It Take to End Homelessness in the United States
Ending homelessness in the United States has remained stubbornly out of reach. Despite hundreds of federal, state, and local plans to end homelessness, most have ended unsuccessfully—due to a range of issues, notably insufficient resources. Homelessness persists and, in many communities, has increased because of myriad intervening factors—many of which lie outside the control of the systems tasked with solving it. This paper summarizes the eviden…
Short-term impacts of housing first on homeless families: A pragmatic randomized controlled trial in Brno, Czechia
This article examines whether Housing First for homeless families reduces homelessness and use of emergency health services and improves security of tenure and caregivers’ mental health. We present the quantitative data from a mixed-methods design. Homeless families with at least one child under 18, residing in Brno, Czechia were recruited for an open-label pragmatic randomized controlled trial. Families were stratified by number of children and …
Mothers’ perceptions of how homelessness and housing interventions affect their children’s behavioral and educational functioning
Children who experience homelessness display substantial variation in outcomes, but little attention has been given to potential mechanisms linking their housing experiences to their functioning. This study explores these mechanisms using qualitative coding of 80 interviews with parents participating in a randomized control trial of housing interventions for families experiencing homelessness. Interviews were conducted an average of 7 months afte…
Periodic Evaluations of Risk Assessments: Identifying Families for Homelessness Prevention Services
The New York City Homebase program is one of only a few comprehensive U.S. homelessness prevention programs. To ensure that in-depth services are provided to families most at risk of homelessness, Homebase utilizes a structured assessment, the Risk Assessment Questionnaire (RAQ), developed using 2004–2008 data. We evaluated the RAQ’s performance in a more recent cohort of 48,450 families with children applying for Homebase services from 2013 to 2…
Using a modified version of photovoice in a European cross‐national study on homelessness
This study proposes an innovative use of a modified version of photovoice for cross‐national qualitative research that allows participants to express their ideas, experiences, and emotions about a topic through photographic language. We examine factors affecting social service providers' work on people experiencing homelessness in Europe. We highlight five advantages of using photovoice in cross‐national research: visual language, methodological …
Allocating Homeless Services After the Withdrawal of the Vulnerability Index–Service Prioritization Decision Assistance Tool
Beyond behaviour: Rethinking integration for people experiencing homelessness
Integration is one of the main goals of homeless services. Despite the growing research on integration and homelessness, few studies start with the perspective of people experiencing homelessness. Integration is often measured as participation in a list of standard behaviours. This process assesses behaviour in accordance with social norms but ignores people's own feelings and understanding of integration. The main aim of this study is to explore…
Factors Associated with Providers’ Work Engagement and Burnout in Homeless Services: A Cross‐national Study
The complexity of homeless service users’ characteristics and the contextual challenges faced by services can make the experience of working with people in homelessness stressful and can put providers’ well‐being at risk. In the current study, we investigated the association between service characteristics (i.e., the availability of training and supervision and the capability‐fostering approach) and social service providers’ work engagement and b…
Homelessness as a Moving Target
Contrary to popular perceptions of homelessness as a static, enduring condition, we emphasize its dynamic nature. The updated macro-micro framework that we develop capitalizes on the increasing availability of over-time data, which makes it easier to examine changes in homelessness and the factors responsible for them. Our framework integrates structural forces-such as income inequality, an affordable housing shortage, social exclusion, and inade…
Addressing the problems of urban education: An ecological systems perspective
Many urban school districts have been beset by a variety of problems including low achievement, high dropout, and disciplinary referral rates. Frequently, efforts to improve urban education are focused on interventions at the student, school, or district level. However, urban scholars recognize that many of these problems are embedded in urban poverty and related issues, including residential racial segregation, housing and food insecurity, and h…
Supportive housing for precariously housed families in the child welfare system: Who benefits most
The Effects of Residential Mobility on the Education Outcomes of Urban Middle School Students and the Moderating Potential of Civic Engagement
Residential mobility is associated with negative education outcomes for urban students, but there is little empirical evidence for school factors that may ameliorate these effects. One such factor may be civic engagement at school. This study analyzed data from 2,000 urban middle school students to examine the interplay of residential mobility, education outcomes, and school civic engagement. Findings show that students who change residences have…
Training to reduce LGBTQ-related bias among medical, nursing, and dental students and providers: A systematic review
Goals and Principles of Providers Working with People Experiencing Homelessness: A Comparison Between Housing First and Traditional Staircase Services in Eight European Countries
The implementation and adaptation of the Housing First (HF) model represented profound changes the structure and delivery, goals, and principles of homeless services. These features of homeless services directly influence providers, their work performance and the clients' outcomes. The present research, conducted in eight European countries, investigated how social providers working in HF or TS (Traditional Staircase) describe and conceptualize t…
What Interventions Work Best for Families Who Experience Homelessness? Impact Estimates from the Family Options Study
What housing and service interventions work best to reduce homelessness for families in the United States? The Family Options Study randomly assigned 2,282 families recruited in homeless shelters across 12 sites to priority access to one of three active interventions or to usual care in their communities. The interventions were long-term rent subsidies, short-term rent subsidies, and transitional housing in supervised programs with intensive psyc…
Adaptation of Nussbaum's Capabilities Framework to Community Mental Health: A Consumer‐Based Capabilities Measure
The capabilities approach provides a rich evaluative framework to guide transformative change in the community mental health system. This study reports the content and construct validity and psychometric properties of a contextualized measure of the extent to which mental health programs foster achieved capabilities. The Achieved Capabilities Questionnaire for Community Mental Health ( ACQ ‐ CMH ), adapted from Nussbaum's capabilities framework, …
APA handbook of community psychology: Theoretical foundations, core concepts, and emerging challenges.
Can Housing and Service Interventions Reduce Family Separations for Families Who Experience Homelessness
Family break‐up is common in families experiencing homelessness. This paper examines the extent of separations of children from parents and of partners from each other and whether housing and service interventions reduced separations and their precursors among 1,857 families across 12 sites who participated in the Family Options Study. Families in shelters were randomized to offers of one of three interventions: permanent housing subsidies that r…
Methods for Influencing Social Policy: The Role of Social Experiments
Research methods in community psychology have grown more diverse since the Swampscott conference, but rigorous social experiments maintain a place among the multiplicity of methods that can promote community psychology values. They are particularly influential in policy circles. Two examples of social experiments to end homelessness for different populations illustrate their role. Both studies show that offering extremely poor and disenfranchised…
Targeting Services to Individuals Most Likely to Enter Shelter: Evaluating the Efficiency of Homelessness Prevention
Successful strategies for homelessness prevention must efficiently target people at greatest risk for experiencing homelessness. We developed a model to target homelessness prevention services to individuals and evaluate its results compared to a similar model we developed for families. We tracked 10,220 individuals who applied for community-based homelessness prevention in New York City from 2004 to 2010 using Cox regression to predict shelter e…
Community Psychology and the Capabilities Approach
What makes for a good life? The capabilities approach to this question has much to offer community psychology, particularly with respect to marginalized groups. Capabilities are freedoms to engage in valued social activities and roles—what people can do and be given both their capacities, and environmental opportunities and constraints. Economist Amartya Sen’s focus on freedoms and agency resonates with psychological calls for empowerment, and ph…
Longitudinal Impact of a Family Critical Time Intervention on Children in High‐Risk Families Experiencing Homelessness: A Randomized Trial
A randomized trial compared effects of a Family Critical Time Intervention (FCTI) to usual care for children in 200 newly homeless families in which mothers had diagnosable mental illness or substance problems. Adapted from an evidence‐based practice to prevent chronic homelessness for adults with mental illnesses, FCTI combines housing and structured, time‐limited case management to connect families leaving shelter with community services. Famil…
Families experiencing housing instability: The effects of housing programs on family routines and rituals
Maintenance of family processes can protect parents, children, and families from the detrimental effects of extreme stressors, such as homelessness. When families cannot maintain routines and rituals, the stressors of poverty and homelessness can be compounded for both caregivers and children. However, characteristics of living situations common among families experiencing homelessness present barriers to the maintenance of family routines and ri…
Predictors of homelessness among families in New York City: From shelter request to housing stability
OBJECTIVES: This study examined predictors of entry into shelter and subsequent housing stability for a cohort of families receiving public assistance in New York City. METHODS: Interviews were conducted with 266 families as they requested shelter and with a comparison sample of 298 families selected at random from the welfare caseload. Respondents were reinterviewed 5 years later. Families with prior history of shelter use were excluded from the…
Social Interaction and Social Support
Typical research models of social support are overly simple on two grounds. First, they treat social support as exogenous to the model. That is, models incorporate the effects of social support on stressors and on psychological distress, but typically ignore the influences of stressors, psychological distress, personal characteristics of recipients, and environmental constraints on support. Second, the models typically consider only positive cons…
Housing, hospitalization, and cost outcomes for homeless individuals with psychiatric disabilities participating in continuum of care and housing first programmes
This article compares two approaches to housing chronically homeless individuals with psychiatric disabilities and often substance abuse. The experimental Housing First programme offered immediate access to independent housing without requiring psychiatric treatment or sobriety; the control Continuum of Care programmes made treatment and sobriety prerequisites for housing. A total of 225 participants were interviewed prior to random assignment an…
Learning from Communities: Overcoming Difficulties in Dissemination of Prevention and Promotion Efforts
The model of prevention science advocated by the Institute of Medicine (P. J. Mrazek & R. J. Haggerty, 1994) has not lead to widespread adoption of prevention and promotion programs for four reasons. The model of dissemination of programs to communities fails to consider community and organizational capacity to implement programs, ignores the need for congruence in values between programs and host sites, displays a pro-innovation bias that underv…
The impact of homelessness on children
Father absence and children's cognitive development
Reviews literature showing detrimental effects of father absence on children's cognitive development as assessed by standardized IQ and achievement tests and school performance. Differential effects associated with characteristics of the absence (cause, duration, onset), the child (age, sex, race, socioeconomic status), and the skill tested (quantitative, verbal) are examined. The evidence suggests that financial hardship, high levels of anxiety,…
Mother–Child Separations Among Homeless and Housed Families Receiving Public Assistance in New York City
We examined the incidence, characteristics, and predictors of separations of children from mothers in 543 poor families receiving public assistance, 251 of whom had experienced homelessness during the previous 5 years. Forty‐four percent of the homeless mothers and 8% of housed mothers were separated from one or more children. A total of 249 children were separated from 110 homeless families and 34 children from 23 housed families. Children were …
Predictors of Homelessness among Older Adults in New York City: Disability, Economic, Human and Social Capital and Stressful Events
We interviewed 61 housed and 79 homeless adults aged 55 and over about disability; economic, human and social capital; and stressful life events prior to becoming homeless. Over half of the homeless group had previously led conventional lives. Human capital, social capital and life events were more important than disability or economic capital in predicting homelessness. The homeless adults were younger, more likely to be male and better educated…
Homelessness: What is a psychologist to do
Contrasts person-centered and structural explanations for homelessness. Methodological problems in studies of homeless people tend to exaggerate the role of individual deficits as causes of homelessness. A review of data on the distribution of poverty and of inadequate and unaffordable housing, with special emphasis on families, suggests the importance of structural causes. Data from 700 families requesting shelter and 524 families randomly drawn…
Consumer Preference Programs for Individuals Who Are Homeless and Have Psychiatric Disabilities: A Drop‐In Center and a Supported Housing Program
We illustrate Fairweather's approach to Experimental Social Innovation and Dissemination with two experimental studies of programs to reduce homelessness for 168 and 225 people with mental illness and often substance abuse. Literally homeless participants were randomly assigned to programs that emphasized consumer choice or to the usual continuum of care, in which housing and services are contingent on sobriety and progress in treatment. A drop‐i…
What Interventions Work Best for Families Who Experience Homelessness? Impact Estimates from the Family Options Study
What housing and service interventions work best to reduce homelessness for families in the United States? The Family Options Study randomly assigned 2,282 families recruited in homeless shelters across 12 sites to priority access to one of three active interventions or to usual care in their communities. The interventions were long-term rent subsidies, short-term rent subsidies, and transitional housing in supervised programs with intensive psyc…
The Longitudinal Effects of Residential Mobility on the Academic Achievement of Urban Elementary and Middle School Students
Residential stability matters to a young person’s educational development, and the present housing crisis has disrupted the residential stability of many families. This study uses latent growth-curve modeling to examine how changing residences affects math and reading achievement from third through eighth grade among a sample of urban elementary and middle-school students. Results show that residential moves in the early elementary years have a n…
Coping with job stress and burnout in the human services
Research on Homelessness: An Introduction
Research on homelessness has tended to focus on problems of homeless individuals, sometimes diverting attention from underlying causes and reinforcing stereotypes about the population. A more comprehensive model of homelessness would include factors at the levels of individuals, social groups, and the socioeconomic context that contribute to homelessness. Papers in this issue investigate key factors at each of these levels. They consider the scop…
The Roles of Housing and Poverty in the Origins of Homelessness
Pathways to Homelessness Among New York City Families
This article uses survey data to identify three pathways followed by homeless families in the period before they requested emergency shelter. The analysis groups 482 New York City families who were new entrants to homelessness into those whose longest residence in the year prior to the shelter request was as primary tenants in their own living quarters (43% of the sample), those who lived with others last year but who had once been primary tenant…
Long-Term Associations of Homelessness With Children's Well-Being
To analyze long-term consequences of homelessness, the authors compared 388 formerly homeless children 55 months after shelter entry with 382 housed peers, birth to 17, using mother- and child-reported health, mental health, community involvement, cognitive performance, and educational records. Both groups scored below cognitive and achievement norms. Small group differences favored housed 4- to 6-year-olds on cognition and 4- to 10-year-olds on …
Does Self‐Help Help: An Empirical Investigation of Scoliosis Peer Support Groups
This study evaluates the impact of participation in self‐help groups for people with scoliosis and their families. In a cross‐sectional study, adolescents with scoliosis, their parents, and adult scoliotics who attended scoliosis clubs (n=245) were compared with nonparticipants (n=495) who inquired about joining clubs. Although most members reported considerable satisfaction with the clubs, participation had no discernible impact on the psychosoc…
Longitudinal Impact of a Family Critical Time Intervention on Children in High‐Risk Families Experiencing Homelessness: A Randomized Trial
A randomized trial compared effects of a Family Critical Time Intervention (FCTI) to usual care for children in 200 newly homeless families in which mothers had diagnosable mental illness or substance problems. Adapted from an evidence‐based practice to prevent chronic homelessness for adults with mental illnesses, FCTI combines housing and structured, time‐limited case management to connect families leaving shelter with community services. Famil…
Expanding community psychology's domain
Community psychology's twin goals of prevention and empowerment are ill-served when researchers and practitioners restrict their activities to traditional mental health settings. This paper echoes the call of the Swampscott conference for expanding community psychology's domain of inquiry and action. It reviews examples from the research literature of efforts at prevention and empowerment in five classes of behavior settings identified by Barker …
Community Psychology and the Capabilities Approach
What makes for a good life? The capabilities approach to this question has much to offer community psychology, particularly with respect to marginalized groups. Capabilities are freedoms to engage in valued social activities and roles—what people can do and be given both their capacities, and environmental opportunities and constraints. Economist Amartya Sen’s focus on freedoms and agency resonates with psychological calls for empowerment, and ph…
International Homelessness: Policy, Socio‐Cultural, and Individual Perspectives
This article draws on other papers in the special issue and additional literature to offer a multi‐level framework for understanding the causes of homelessness in the developed world and efforts to reduce or end it. Social policies that reduce inequality and provide income and other supports to those at the bottom of the income distribution are associated with lower levels of homelessness across nations. The allocation of subsidies, patterns of s…
Promoting the well‐being of working parents: Coping, social support, and flexible job schedules
Efficient Targeting of Homelessness Prevention Services for Families
Objectives. We developed and evaluated a model to target homelessness prevention services to families more efficiently. Methods. We followed 11 105 families who applied for community-based services to prevent homelessness in New York City from October 1, 2004, to June 30, 2008, through administrative records, using Cox regression to predict shelter entry. Results. Over 3 years, 12.8% of applicants entered shelter. Both the complete Cox regression…
Predictors of shelter use among low-income families: Psychiatric history, substance abuse, and victimization
For poor housed and homeless families in New York City, NY, we examined the degree to which psychiatric and substance-abuse problems and victimization placed the families at elevated risk of requiring emergency housing, and we documented the prevalence of such problems. These problems were infrequently reported by both groups. However, past mental hospitalization, treatment in a detoxification center, childhood sexual abuse, and adult physical ab…
Father absence and children's cognitive development
Reviews literature showing detrimental effects of father absence on children's cognitive development as assessed by standardized IQ and achievement tests and school performance. Differential effects associated with characteristics of the absence (cause, duration, onset), the child (age, sex, race, socioeconomic status), and the skill tested (quantitative, verbal) are examined. The evidence suggests that financial hardship, high levels of anxiety,…
Ideology and Practice of Deinstitutionalization
This article compares the history and current status of deinstitution‐alization efforts for the mentally ill, criminal offenders, and the aged in need of long‐term care. Evidence from other articles in this issue, and elsewhere, suggests that similar ideologies of deinstitutionalization have guided thinking for all three groups but that practices have diverged. Only the mentally ill have moved out of institutions in large numbers, and, for all th…
Institutions and Alternatives: An Overview
Consistency in Coping
Social Interaction and Social Support
Typical research models of social support are overly simple on two grounds. First, they treat social support as exogenous to the model. That is, models incorporate the effects of social support on stressors and on psychological distress, but typically ignore the influences of stressors, psychological distress, personal characteristics of recipients, and environmental constraints on support. Second, the models typically consider only positive cons…
Coping with job stress and burnout in the human services
Does Self‐Help Help: An Empirical Investigation of Scoliosis Peer Support Groups
This study evaluates the impact of participation in self‐help groups for people with scoliosis and their families. In a cross‐sectional study, adolescents with scoliosis, their parents, and adult scoliotics who attended scoliosis clubs (n=245) were compared with nonparticipants (n=495) who inquired about joining clubs. Although most members reported considerable satisfaction with the clubs, participation had no discernible impact on the psychosoc…
Expanding community psychology's domain
Community psychology's twin goals of prevention and empowerment are ill-served when researchers and practitioners restrict their activities to traditional mental health settings. This paper echoes the call of the Swampscott conference for expanding community psychology's domain of inquiry and action. It reviews examples from the research literature of efforts at prevention and empowerment in five classes of behavior settings identified by Barker …
Gender differences in coping and social supports: Testing socialization and role constraint theories
Two theories have been advanced to explain gender differences in coping. Socialization theory states that women are socialized into using less effective coping strategies than men. Role constraint theory affirms that no gender differences in coping exist when men and women occupy the same roles. Three studies, where the roles occupied by women and men were the same, were conducted to test the theories. Two of them also compared role constraint an…
Promoting the well‐being of working parents: Coping, social support, and flexible job schedules
Crossing substantive domains
This paper advocates a middle ground between detailed immersion in a single context and broad generalizations that ignore context. Contextual constraints are best understood when context is varied explicitly. For example, both the content and the effects of coping efforts and social support varied with context across several studies. Comparison across substantive domains is an important tool for understanding both theory and any specific domain
Pathways to Homelessness Among New York City Families
This article uses survey data to identify three pathways followed by homeless families in the period before they requested emergency shelter. The analysis groups 482 New York City families who were new entrants to homelessness into those whose longest residence in the year prior to the shelter request was as primary tenants in their own living quarters (43% of the sample), those who lived with others last year but who had once been primary tenant…
Alternative Models for Sheltering Homeless Families
This study assessed costs, quality of life, services, length of stay, and clienteles in 9 nonprofit shelters for families in New York City. It compared different types of nonprofit shelters and used published data to compare the nonprofits as a class to welfare hotels and city‐operated congregate shelters. The nonprofit models provided a reasonable quality of life, and both more and better coordinated services than the welfare hotels at a slightl…
Research on Homelessness: An Introduction
Research on homelessness has tended to focus on problems of homeless individuals, sometimes diverting attention from underlying causes and reinforcing stereotypes about the population. A more comprehensive model of homelessness would include factors at the levels of individuals, social groups, and the socioeconomic context that contribute to homelessness. Papers in this issue investigate key factors at each of these levels. They consider the scop…
Social relationships and vulnerability to becoming homeless among poor families
Social relationships and vulnerability to becoming homeless among poor families
This study compares social relationships of 677 mothers in families requesting shelter with those of 495 mothers in housed families, randomly selected from the public assistance caseload in New York City. As hypothesized, women seeking shelter had experienced higher levels of a variety of childhood and adult events indicative of disruptions in social relationships. Contrary to our hypothesis, they were more likely than were housed mothers to have…
The impact of homelessness on children
Homelessness: What is a psychologist to do
Contrasts person-centered and structural explanations for homelessness. Methodological problems in studies of homeless people tend to exaggerate the role of individual deficits as causes of homelessness. A review of data on the distribution of poverty and of inadequate and unaffordable housing, with special emphasis on families, suggests the importance of structural causes. Data from 700 families requesting shelter and 524 families randomly drawn…
Social integration and social support: Moving “social support” beyond the individual level
Despite the extra-individual nature of social relationships, social support and social networks have been treated by and large as individual-level concepts. This article describes some of the forms that an individualistic bias takes in our current approaches to conceptualization and measurement of social support and social networks and suggests three steps towards an extra-individual treatment of these concepts: (1) expand notions of social suppo…
Predictors of shelter use among low-income families: Psychiatric history, substance abuse, and victimization
For poor housed and homeless families in New York City, NY, we examined the degree to which psychiatric and substance-abuse problems and victimization placed the families at elevated risk of requiring emergency housing, and we documented the prevalence of such problems. These problems were infrequently reported by both groups. However, past mental hospitalization, treatment in a detoxification center, childhood sexual abuse, and adult physical ab…
Individual, group and agency strategies for coping with job stressors in residential child care programmes
This article describes job stressors experienced by workers in residential child care programmes, and coping strategies undertaken by individual workers, their co‐workers and their organizations. It also examines the associations of stressors and problem‐focused and emotion‐focused coping strategies at each level with four measures of job attitudes and distress. Stressful job circumstances and coping responses were coded from transcripts of in‐de…
The Roles of Housing and Poverty in the Origins of Homelessness
You Can't Eliminate Homelessness Without Housing
Ecological assessment: Introduction to the special issue
Family Homelessness: State or Trait
Compares conceptualizations of homelessness as a temporary state through which people pass or a permanent trait that emanates from individual characteristics. Evidence from a longitudinal study of 564 homeless families in New York City and additional secondary sources supports the view that for families, homelessness is a temporary state that is resolved by the provision of subsidized housing. Even for single individuals with severe mental distur…
Psychology (60 works) · Homelessness and Social Issues (52 works) · Medicine (37 works) · Sociology (36 works) · Political science (29 works) · Urban, Neighborhood, and Segregation Studies (23 works) · Food Security and Health in Diverse Populations (22 works) · Social Psychology (22 works) · Psychiatry (21 works) · Public health (19 works)