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This research examines a service delivery system for homeless youths that was created by a public-private partnership between the business community, nonprofit service providers, and governmental entities. The article opens with a brief introduction to homelessness, a review of the literature on the material lives of the poor, and a discussion of public-private alliances. A description of the ethnographic method employed in this study follows, with a concentration on the locally appropriate roles assumed by the researcher The results examine the genesis of this public-private initiative and the development of the service delivery model, its implementation, and its first systemwide review. The final section closes with lessons learned from this particular alliance that may have implications for the development of other public-private partnerships.
The public policy issue of homelessness was one of the most vexing social problems of the late 20th century, with nearly 100 million people without homes worldwide (United Nations Development Programme 1997). Estimates of the number of men, women, and children who were homeless on any given night within the United States during the 1980s and into the 1990s range from 600,000 to 3 million (Hill 1991). The seriousness of this dilemma caused a wide variety of social scientists to explore possible reasons, resulting in an expanding list that includes unemployment among the poor, deinstitutionalization of former mental patients, scarcity of low-cost housing, drug addiction and alcohol abuse, and domestic violence (Hill and Stamey 1990).
As the century came to a close, the character and makeup of this subpopulation within the United States had transformed (Wasson and Hill 1998). Although old stereotypes of Bowery bums and bag ladies remain within popular culture, the fastest growing segments are families and children. Young women head the vast majority of homeless families, and their children often are less than 5 years old. These youths spend their critical physical and psychological development years without the security of a permanent home, increasing the likelihood that they will remain on the streets (Hill 2001b). In addition, throwaway and runaway youths have become a significant homeless subgroup. Oftentimes these children leave home as young teens because of eviction by a parent or the creation of intolerable and abusive conditions. As a result, they often end up sleeping outside.