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Profiles of Permanent Supportive Housing Residents Related to Their Housing Conditions, Service Use, and Associated Sociodemographic and Clinical Characteristics

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Abstract

As permanent supportive housing (PSH) is the main strategy promoted to reduce homelessness, understanding how PSH resident profiles may be differentiated is crucial to the optimization of PSH implementation – and a subject that hasn’t been studied yet. This study identified PSH resident profiles based on their housing conditions and service use, associated with their sociodemographic and clinical characteristics. In 2020–2021, 308 PSH residents from Quebec (Canada) were interviewed, with K-means cluster analysis produced to identify profiles and subsequent analyses to compare profiles and PSH resident characteristics. Of the three profiles identified, Profiles 1 and 2 (70% of sample) showed moderate or poor housing, neighborhood, and health conditions, and moderate or high unmet care needs and service use. Besides their “moderate” conditions, Profile 1 residents (52%) reported being in PSH for more than two years and being less educated. With the “worst” conditions and high service use, Profile 2 (18%) included younger individuals, while Profile 3 (30%) showed the “best” conditions and integrated individuals with more protective determinants (e.g., few in foster care, homelessness at older age, more self-esteem), with a majority living in single-site PSH and reporting higher satisfaction with support and community-based services. Profiles 1 and 2 may be provided with more psychosocial, crisis, harm reduction, and empowerment interventions, and peer helper support. Profile 2 may benefit from more intensive and integrated care, and better housing conditions. Continuous PSH may be sustained for Profile 3, with regular monitoring of service satisfaction and met needs.

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Abbreviations

ED:

Emergency department

MD:

Mental disorders

PSH:

Permanent supportive housing

SUD:

Substance use disorders

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Acknowledgements

This study was funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC). We gratefully acknowledge the support of this agency. We also thank the individuals who participated in the study, our research team, and the stirring research committee and all the managers and staff of the organizations who helped us with the recruitment. Finally, we thank the Quebec Population Health Research Network for its contribution to the support of this study.

Funding

The study was funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC), Project #890-2018-0065, and the second author (BA) received a scholarship from the Quebec Population Health Research Network.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychiatry, McGill University, Montréal, Québec, Canada

    Marie-Josée Fleury & Bahram Armoon

  2. Douglas Hospital Research Centre, Montréal, Québec, Canada

    Marie-Josée Fleury & Bahram Armoon

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  1. Marie-Josée Fleury
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  2. Bahram Armoon
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Contributions

MJF obtained the funding and supervised the data collection. MJF and BA conceived the study. BA produced the statistical analysis. BA and MJF analyzed and interpreted the data. BA wrote the first draft of the manuscript, and MJF its final version. Both authors approved the final copy of the paper for submission.

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Correspondence to Marie-Josée Fleury.

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This study was approved by the Douglas Mental Health Institute Research Ethics Committee. All participants provided written informed consent in accordance with the Helsinki declaration.

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Fleury, MJ., Armoon, B. Profiles of Permanent Supportive Housing Residents Related to Their Housing Conditions, Service Use, and Associated Sociodemographic and Clinical Characteristics. Psychiatr Q (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11126-024-10071-0

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