Discussion
hazy
This 2.5-year study offers a unique longitudinal perspective on the tremendous inner strength and momentum needed to navigate through and break free from the hazy, liminal space between socioeconomic exclusion and inclusion. Crucially, these experiences existed despite the provision of portable rent subsidies for 2 years, and regardless of being assigned a formal study mentor. These qualitative insights align with our quantitative data that showed no statistically significant improvements in proxy indicators of socioeconomic inclusion in the intervention group (rent subsidies + mentorship) relative to the control group (rent subsidies only) 18 months post-randomization (Thulien et al., Socioeconomic inequities along with negative explicit and implicit messages about who these young people were and what they might become set them up to remain in their liminal post-homelessness existence—to succumb to the path of least resistance—rather than forging ahead. Those able to break free from the fog had a sense of purposefulness to their existence, a feeling of being home—belonging to themselves—not wholly dependent on physical accommodation, and were surrounded by diverse connections that helped guide and encourage them on their journey. We observed the potential positive impact of diverse connections in our quantitative data as well; ancillary analysis suggested those with informal mentors at baseline—found in places like school, work, and faith communities—felt significantly more psychologically integrated into the community at 18 months relative to those with no informal mentors at baseline (Thulien et al., The importance of shifting focus to fostering a sense of home (an intangible feeling of connection and belonging) vs. focusing primarily on housing (a tangible physical structure) is a crucial learning from this study and challenges individual-oriented conceptualizations of what young people exiting homelessness require for meaningful socioeconomic inclusion. An overemphasis on the latter may explain why systematic reviews of qualitative and quantitative studies and rigorous trials of housing-focused interventions (e.g., Housing First) conducted in high-income countries show that it is challenging to demonstrate significant improvements in outcomes beyond housing stability compared with treatment as usual (Aubry et al., The importance of utilizing identity capital to help navigate through and break free from the post-homelessness fog was a fundamental takeaway from this longitudinal study and has important implications for front-line practice and future interventions. There is a socioeconomic “grooming” that begins at birth (Browman et al., Intervening on some or all components of identity capital to mediate socioeconomic inclusion for youth who have experienced homelessness is a nascent area of research, but there are some promising transferrable findings from interventions with youth who were currently experiencing homelessness and interventions where youth may not have experienced homelessness but were from low socioeconomic backgrounds (Browman et al., 