NON-PROFIT AND GRANTS: HOMELESS CONSULTATION

Non-Profit and Grants: Homeless Consultation



Non-Profit and Grants

MEMO

Homelessness, Crime and the Criminal Justice System On behalf of the UK's Centre for Urban and Community Studies, we are pleased to submit this proposal. Our team consists of an organization that has a long and highly respected history of providing a broad range of services to people who are involved with the criminal justice system, and a university-based research centre that has a major focus on research on homelessness and related social and housing policy issues.

The UK community has been working on the housing and related social support needs of the ex-offender population for many years. About 80% of its clients are homeless - they are released with no home to go to (“no fixed address”). This is a severe and growing problem, yet very little research has been conducted to help policy makers and service providers.

We intend to answer the six questions outlined in the proposal call. In addition, we have added a question about the number of homeless youth and adults who have been involved with the criminal justice system. We have organized these questions into three groups: the size of the problem; best practices; and the police, homeless people, victimization, and crime. We will study both youth and adults.

The research process necessary to answer these questions is exploratory and multimethod. We seek to answer all questions in your proposal call because they are interrelated, because similar data collection methods are required, and because there are efficiencies in tackling them as a group. Once a thorough exploratory study like the one we propose here has been carried out, then we can better identify more focused research questions and research tasks. The quality, range of experience, and ingenuity of the research team is especially important for this undertaking. We feel we have the ideal mix of expertise - people who know the target population first-hand and people who are familiar with research methods and the literature on homelessness and on criminal justice.

We plan to form a small steering committee to guide the research process, hold a research inception workshop to fine-tune the research design and schedule, and to ensure that data collection and analysis are carried out jointly and in an integrated fashion by a community-based and an academic-based member of the research team. We would be pleased to answer questions about this proposal. We are open to advice about improving it. The research team we have assembled and the members of the steering committee we are proposing are excited about the prospect of working together on this vitally important aspect of the problem of homelessness.

Sincerely,

GRANT PROPOSAL

Executive Summary

This joint project proposal by the UK community and the Centre for Urban and Community Studies at the University of Toronto will examine the complex interrelationships among the police, the court system, and homeless youth and adults, and explore the systemic and structural causes of victimization and criminalization of homeless youth and ...