Dennis P. Culhane

Investigating the link between gun possession and gun assault

Charles C. Branas — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 13:42:44 PDT

Objectives. We investigated the possible relationship between being shot in an assault and possession of a gun at the time.Methods. We enrolled 677 case participants that had been shot in an assault and 684 population-based control participants within Philadelphia from 2003 to 2006. We adjusted odds ratios for confounding variables.Results. After adjustment, individuals in possession of a gun were 4.46 (P<.05) times more likely to be shot in an assault than those not in possession. Among gun assaults where the victim had at least some chance to resist, this adjustedodds ratio increased to 5.45 (P<.05). Conclusions. On average, guns did not protect those who possessed them from being shot in an assault. Although successful defensive gun uses occur each year, the probability of success may be low for civilian gun users in urban areas. Such users should reconsider their possession of guns or, at least, understand that regular possession necessitates careful safety countermeasures.

Using Adult Linkages Project Data for Determining Patterns and Costs of Services Use by General Relief Recipients in Los Angeles County

Stephen Metraux — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 07:42:03 PDT

This study examines services use and related costs for two cohorts of General Relief (GR) recipients in Los Angeles County. The study is made possible by the creation of the Adult Linkages Project (ALP), a data warehouse containing data on the GR recipients that spans eight Los Angeles County departments. This integration of data sources and County departments enables a unique window into the comprehensive use of County services by GR recipients, and allows for the exploration of hidden costs that GR recipients incur to Los Angeles County. The identification of such services use patterns forms the basis for service interventions that can provide GR recipients with more efficient, more effective, and more coordinated services.The GR recipients for this analysis belong to one of two cohorts. The first cohort, referred to as the first-time user cohort, contains all persons who were certified to receiveGR benefits for the first time in the first quarter of 2006. The second cohort, referred to as the long-term user cohort, is comprised of persons who had been certified for GR services prior to 2006, did not use any GR services in 2005, and were re-certified for GR in the first or second quarter of 2006. The data on receipt of GR benefits spans the time period January 2006 through October 2007. Data from other County services often spans longer time periods, meaning that data on services use is available prior to the date GR assistance was initiated and in most cases also after the last month of GR receipt in the time period. The study is divided into five sections. The first section is the longest, and examines the services use by the GR cohorts across Department of Public Social Services and six other County departments. In the second section, these findings across individual departments are integrated to provide a more comprehensive view of the extent and costs of County services to these cohorts, and identify heavy services users among these cohorts. The third section looks at the extent to which certain recipient characteristics, including disability, homelessness, and employment, affect the propensity to use County services. The fourth section provides a geographic analysis of GR receipt. Finally, the fifth section discusses implications for policy and research based on these findings.

The 2008 Annual Homelessness Assessment Report to Congress

Dennis P. Culhane — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 14:17:32 PDT

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) is pleased to present the 2008 Annual Homeless Assessment Report (AHAR), the fourth in a series of reports on homelessness in the United States. The reports respond to a series of Congressional directives calling for the collection and analysis of data on homelessness. The 2008 AHAR breaks new ground by being the first report to provide year-to-year trend information on homelessness in the United States. The report provides the latest counts of homelessness nationwide--including counts of individuals, persons in families, and special population groups such as veterans and chronically homeless people. The report also covers the types of locations where people use emergency shelter and transitional housing; where people were just before they entered a residential program; how much time they spend in shelters over the course of a year; and the size and use of the U.S inventory of residential programs for homeless people. This AHAR also is the first to compare oint-in-Time estimates reported by Continuums of Care across several years.

Health and Social Characteristics of Homeless Adults in Manhattan Who Were Chronically or Not Chronically Unsheltered

Aaron J. Levitt — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 14:09:35 PDT

Objective: This study compared health and social characteristics of two groups of homeless adults in Manhattan--those who were chronically unsheltered and those who were not. Methods: Outreach workers conducted brief, structured interviews with 1,093 unsheltered homeless adults. Respondents were later categorized as being chronically unsheltered on the basis of New York City criteria (sleeping without shelter at least nine of the previous 24 months). Results: The sample had high rates of substance abuse (65%), serious medical issues (42%), and repeated trauma (51%) and low rates of medical insurance (47%) and income entitlements (26%) entitlements. Sixty-seven percent were chronically unsheltered, and these respondents had significantly higher rates on several measures, including military service, incarceration, and mental illness. Conclusions: The sick and aged nature of this population suggests that more aggressive efforts are needed to enroll unsheltered homeless people in income and health benefits and to create adequate housing opportunities with appropriate support services. (Psychiatric Services 60: 978-981, 2009)

Alcohol Consumption, Alcohol Outlets, and the Risk of Being Assaulted with a Gun

Dennis P. Culhane — Tue, 26 May 2009 09:36:24 PDT

Background: We conducted a population-based case-control study to better delineate the relationship between individual alcohol consumption, alcohol outlets in the surrounding environment, and being assaulted with a gun.Methods: An incidence density sampled case-control study was conducted in the entire city of Philadelphia from 2003 to 2006. We enrolled 677 cases that had been shot in an assault and 684 population-based controls. The relationships between 2 independent variables of interest, alcohol consumption and alcohol outlet availability, and the outcome of being assaulted with a gun were analyzed. Conditional logistic regression was used to adjust for numerous confounding variables.Results: After adjustment, heavy drinkers were 2.67 times as likely to be shot in an assault when compared with nondrinkers (p < 0.10) while light drinkers were not at significantly greater risk of being shot in an assault when compared with nondrinkers. Regression-adjusted analysesalso demonstrated that being in an area of high off-premise alcohol outlet availability significantly increased the risk of being shot in an assault by 2.00 times (p < 0.05). Being in an area of high on-premise alcohol outlet availability did not significantly change this risk. Heavy drinkers in areas of high off-premise alcohol outlet availability were 9.34 times ( p <.05) as likely to be shot in an assault.Conclusions: This study finds that the gun assault risk to individuals who are near off-premise alcohol outlets is about the same as or statistically greater than the risk they incur from heavy drinking. The combination of heavy drinking and being near off-premise outlets resulted in greater risk than either factor alone. By comparison, light drinking and being near on-premise alcohol outlets were not associated with increased risks for gun assault. Cities should consider addressing alcohol-related factors, especially off-premise outlets, as highly modifiable and politically feasible approaches to reducing gun violence.

Help in Time: An Evaluation of Philadelphia's Community-Based Homelessness Prevention Program

Yin-Ling I. Wong — Fri, 08 May 2009 13:26:38 PDT

This report provides an evaluation of Philadelphia's neighborhood-based homelessness prevention initiative. Results indicate that nearly all households served do not become homeless. But it is unclear if households would have become homeless had they not been served. Recommendations are made for targeting prevention interventions to families requesting shelter.

The Cost of Homelessness: A Perspective from the United States

Dennis P. Culhane — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 13:45:41 PST

This paper discusses how researchers and others have analyzed the services histories of persons who have experienced homelessness, as well as their imputed costs. This research has been used both to make visible the ways in which the clients of mainstream social welfare systems (health, corrections, income maintenance and child welfare) become homeless and, complementarily, the impact of people who experience homelessness on the use of these service systems. Most published work in this area has been based on the integration of administrative databases to identify cases and service utilization patterns; some have used retrospective interviews. Results have been used to encourage agency administrators and policymakers to make investments in programs that reduce homelessness and/or the duration of homelessness periods. Quite recently, many local homeless services planning organizations in the US have used this approach to demonstrate the high costs of chronic homelessness and the potential cost offsets associated with the placement of people in supported housing. The opportunities and limitations associated with these various approaches, including their potential applicability to other countries and service sectors are discussed.

On Becoming Homeless: The Structural and Experiential Dynamics of Residential Instability

Dennis P. Culhane — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 11:21:46 PDT

Novel Linkage of Individual and Geographic Data to Study Firearm Violence

Charles Branas — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 10:21:43 PDT

Firearm violence is the end result of a causative web of individual-level and geographic risk factors. Few, if any, studies of firearm violence have been able to simultaneously determine the population-based relative risks that individuals experience as a result of what they were doing at a specific point in time and where they were, geographically, at a specific point in time. This paper describes the linkage of individual and geographic data that was undertaken as part of a population-based case-control study of firearm violence in Philadelphia. New methods and applications of these linked data relevant to researchers and policymakers interested in firearm violence are also discussed.

The 2007 Annual Homelessness Assessment Report to Congress

Dennis P. Culhane — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 09:36:14 PDT

The 2007 AHAR is the first AHAR based on an entire year of data about persons who use emergency and transitional housing programs. In addition, the report contains new information about the seasonal patterns of homelessness and long-term users of shelters and presents new appendices that provide community-level information on the number of homeless persons.