Private Personal Care: Homes And The ‘Hardest To House’

Project aim was to survey the housing history of tenants in private boarding homes and examine the levels of care and support in these homes. The starting hypothesis, based on anecdotal evidence was that private boarding homes catered to a disproportionately higher percentage of hard-to-house individuals and that the housing history of these tenants would show a pattern of evictions from other non-profit housing providers. The report found the latter not to be the case and were very surprised to find little evidence of non-profit housing in tenants’ past. The researchers interviewed discharge planners in an attempt to explain this finding and arrived at some tentative conclusions. The tenant interviews provided the research team with a good sense of tenant likes and dislikes and what worked for them. This data coupled with results from landlord interviews points the way toward developing best practices and standards for these homes.