International Commentary: Eliminating Family Homelessness and the Family Options Study

Geoffrey Nelson
Wilfrid Laurier University

For this commentary, I reviewed the report on the 3-year outcomes of the Family Options Study (Gubits et al., 2016a, 2016b) and two articles (Shinn, Brown, and Gubits, 2016; Shinn et al., 2016) published on this study. In this commentary, I discuss the interventions and their underlying theories of change, the target group, methodological issues, the findings, and the policy implications of the study. The Family Options Study is an evaluation of different program options for families experiencing homelessness. The study was conducted in 12 communities, enrolled 2,282 participants, and used a randomized controlled trial (RCT) design. This study is, by far, the largest, most rigorous comparative evaluation of interventions for homeless families ever conducted anywhere. As such, it has important policy implications for how homeless families are best served.