Understanding How Young People Exit Homelessness in Australia: A Critical Realist Approach

Abstract

Despite years of policy attention and increasing intervention, the numbers of young people experiencing homelessness in Australia continue to increase. Previous meta-theoretical approaches to understanding homelessness amongst young people are largely unable to explain the conditions which enable young people to exit homelessness and maintain stable housing. We put forward Critical Realism as a way of overcoming the limitations of the three main sets of approaches which have been used to date: Empiricism, Interpretivism, and Interactionism / Epidemiology. The meta-theoretical assumptions made by Critical Realism can allow researchers to more robustly explain what enables young people to exit homelessness and maintain stable housing by identifying what it is about the structures and mechanisms, or the absence of these structures and mechanisms, which leads to this outcome. By using a Critical Realist approach, we hope to be able to contribute to more robust explanations of how young people exit homelessness and maintain housing.