Housing, Transitional

What is Transitional Housing?

For the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), “transitional housing” refers to programs intended to facilitate the movement to permanent housing of homeless individuals with mental or physical disabilities and homeless families with children, usually within twenty-four months. Compared to emergency shelters, transitional housing programs tend to be smaller, offer more privacy, provide more intense goal-oriented services, and place more limits on the length of stay. For people with mental health or substance abuse problems, transitional housing often doubles as residential treatment, with both structure and services organized to address clinical and addiction issues. Compared to permanent housing, transitional programs are distinguished by time limits on stays, a focus on changing residents' behavior, the use of behavioral criteria for admissions and discharges, and the absence of leases or other protections of tenancy rights.

Transitional housing programs vary in the populations they serve (for instance, people with disabilities or families rather than individuals), the amount of privacy their physical structure allows (for example, congregate settings rather than scattered apartments), the services they provide, their requirement for participation in services, and their admission, tenure, and disposition policies for moving people through the program.

The Role of Transitional Housing in Homeless Policy

The context for the development of transitional housing was the crisis of affordable permanent housing that was revealed when homelessness mushroomed in the 1980s. As the homeless population shifted to include more families and disabled adults, nonprofit agencies emerged to address housing and service needs not met by public services.

[Page 269]A major impetus for developing transitional housing for homeless families was to improve on inadequate shelters. In New York City, for example, a lack of affordable housing led to increasing lengths of stay in overburdened family shelters that had never been intended for long-term residence. Transitional housing programs with more private accommodations offered a more humane alternative. They also developed an array of services (assistance with budgeting, money management, housing search, vocational services, and parenting skills training) that were expected to enhance residential stability. For individual homeless adults with psychiatric and substance abuse problems, nonprofit agencies developed “low demand” transitional housing to attract those who were unwilling to enter shelters, and more service-intensive transitional housing that offered “housing readiness” services (including assistance with medication management, enforced sobriety, and money management) to help those with disabilities compete for the limited permanent housing slots.

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