Pathways to homelessness: self-perceived rationales of homelessness and associations among experiences in childhood and adulthood

UnrestrictedThe purpose of this study was to develop the measurement model of rationales for homelessness and the structural model of pathways to homelessness. In the absence of specific method for combining individual and structural accounts with respect to how individuals become homeless, the study created the homeless individuals' self-perceived rationales for homelessness covering ten indicators from both individual and structural accounts. The study also developed structural model overarching from adverse childhood experiences to pathways to chronic homelessness. In addition, the multilevel model was created and tested in order to test the impact of two aggregated variables of rent rate and unemployment rate in macro-level on the measurement model of rationales for homelessness in micro-level. It was hypothesized that the measurement model created the second-order latent variable of homelessness, significant associations among experiences in childhood and adulthood with pathways to become homeless, and a significant influence of macro-level factors to rationales for homelessness.; This study was a cross-sectional, quantitative survey of 3,226 homeless individuals across the County of Los Angeles. To address the study's hypotheses, bivariate analysis, confirmatory factor analysis, and structural equation modeling with binary indicators were performed.; The measurement model fitted well to the data and configural invariance was found across gender, ethnicity, and the type of homelessness. Moreover, the structural model fitted well to the data. Gender differences were found in pathways both to become homeless, and to become chronic homeless. Adverse childhood experiences significantly explained to become homeless directly and indirectly. Additionally, the results from the multilevel model showed that the rate of rent was found to be significant and explained the majority of variances in the between-level model. The findings from three model tests clearly presented that the combination of individual and structural accounts explained both rationales for homelessness and pathways to homelessness