Few portrayals exist of homeless persons as wage earners. Instead, common images of this population manifest stereotypes of “drunk, stoned, crazy and sick” single adults (Snow, Anderson, and Koegel, 1994: 461; Wright, 1989) and of families headed by single parents beset by trauma and lacking human capital (Bassuk, 2007; ICPH, 2013; Rog and Buckner, 2008). Behind these negative portrayals lie more fundamental questions related to the relevance of work in a setting of extreme poverty.
In this study, we take up questions related to the role of employment and earnings in entries into and exits from homelessness, events related to broader dynamics of homelessness. The preponderance of research on homelessness remains focused on associations between individual characteristics and outcomes related to becoming or remaining homeless, although such associations are overstated (Draine et al., 2002) and facilitate the stigma that accompanies homelessness (Phelan et al., 1997). Employment, insofar as it has a bearing on homelessness, is more ephemeral than are the relatively static individual traits. Specifically, the vagaries of losing and gaining employment can lead to becoming homeless and, alternately, offer a means of exiting homelessness.