Martha R. Burt

This comment discusses several implications of the shelter use patterns revealed in the article by Culhane and his colleagues. It takes issue with the premise that reducing shelter use by families will necessarily mean that fewer of them are or will become homeless. It discusses the limited evidence of the need for transitional and permanent supportive housing options for families and offers an alternative to eliminating transitional housing completely--a blended model of supportive housing that expects many families to move on but offers permanency for those that cannot.

Finally, it discusses the difficulties of putting the authors' recommendations into practice, since they would require a good deal of centralized control and major changes in homeless and mainstream systems of care. Few communities would have the commitment and the resources in the form of mainstream and homeless assistance agencies to approximate the type of system being suggested.

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