The racialization of poverty is an uncontested truth. In whatever way society is stratified economically, the concentration of minority populations increases as the level of poverty increases. Homelessness may be understood as the extreme manifestation of poverty, so much so that whatever other factors there may be, they are all covariant with poverty. And so, we expect to see racial inequity in populations experiencing homelessness passed on to us from social forces of racism broadly present in the economy. Our challenge is to determine how race and inequality manifest in the experience of homelessness and the execution of the system designed to prevent and respond to homelessness.

This analysis takes a deep dive into the specifics of the attribution of the status of ‘chronically homeless’ to people who otherwise exhibit patterns of chronicity in their housing instability, including a detailed analysis of the triage tool and disability diagnosis in Polk county and how those things relate to race and ethnicity considering the impacts of requiring a medical professional determine whether a person does or does not have a disability.

Illicit substance use among populations experiencing homelessness in Polk County, Iowa favors methamphetamine use. This contrasts with recent national conversations about expansion of prevalence of opiate use among populations experiencing homelessness but is more consistent with SAMHSA data on drug use regionally.

While the population in the United States is aging overall, the population experiencing homelessness is aging at a significantly higher rate than the population as a whole. The impact is most clearly demonstrated among those clients in permanent supportive housing.

This investigation examines the conditions of housing instability in Council Bluffs and need for additional permanent housing, both in isolation and relative to provision within the continuum of care between Omaha and Council Bluffs.

The persistent nature of homelessness and poverty is a social fact and point of confusion for many observers. A remarkably constant and predictable number of people are homeless at any given time. Why is it, how is it, that in such a wealthy economy full of opportunity so many people find themselves homeless?

Organized by HUD’s continua of care (COC), Institute for Community Alliances (ICA) operates HMIS systems in Iowa. Those Iowa COC are Polk County, Woodbury County, Pottawattamie County reports as part of the Omaha Nebraska COC, but in this report Pottawattamie providers are included in some tables, then across the state the remaining 96 counties comprise the Balance of State continuum of care. […]