Street-level scholarship has increasingly turned to how organizations and frontline providers respond to crisis. Yet crises evolve, and street-level organizations may vary in how they relate to state entities that coordinate crisis response efforts. Drawing on an ethnographic case study of the homelessness criminalization crisis in Austin, Texas, this article shows how the rise and rapid implementation of a punitive approach, focused on removing visible encampments, intensified crisis acuity, which increased provider ambiguity, fractured coordination, and exacerbated harm. Public providers, closely tied to the city, could at times mitigate harm for people in visible encampments but risked complicity as police enforcement rapidly escalated. In contrast, nonprofit providers were separate from city efforts and focused on the most vulnerable, yet their separation paradoxically limited their ability to influence outcomes or reduce harm. Drawing on nonprofit studies’ focus on public–nonprofit differences and social work’s critique of state-provider entanglements under conditions of criminalization, these findings show how intensifying crisis acuity and differential organizational-state relationships shape frontline adaptation and coordination. Criminalizing homelessness harms homeless individuals and the service systems designed to support them, underscoring tradeoffs in both public provision and government–nonprofit collaboration.

People experiencing homelessness (PEH) are at increased risk of tuberculosis (TB) infection and progression to TB disease. Data on TB infection prevalence among hospitalised PEH in low-incidence countries remain limited. This study aimed to estimate TB infection prevalence and describe associated demographic and clinical characteristics among PEH admitted to an urban tertiary hospital in Dublin, Ireland. A prevalence study was conducted between November 2023 and March 2025 using an opt-out screening model. Hospitalised PEH were offered interferon gamma release assay (IGRA) testing on admission. Demographic and clinical data were collected, and positive IGRA results were assessed clinically and radiographically to exclude active TB disease. Estimated lifetime risk of progression to TB disease was calculated using a validated risk-modelling algorithm.Among 118 PEH screened, 13 (11%) were IGRA-positive and 3 (2.5%) had indeterminate results. The cohort was predominantly male (77%) with a mean age of 46 years. Non–Irish-born individuals had higher IGRA positivity than Irish-born participants (23.8% vs 8.3%, p = .054). Substance and alcohol use disorders were common, over half had previous incarceration, and one-third were sleeping rough at admission. Among IGRA-positive individuals, the mean estimated lifetime risk of progression to TB disease was 6.96% (SD 3.3). These findings support strengthened, integrated TB prevention strategies for PEH.

Housing policy has been a busy area of activity for the Labour government in its first year. In this paper we critically assess the tensions and contradictions within these housing policy changes, examining whether they add up to a coherent, programmatic response to the ‘housing crisis’ which can deliver for individuals and households struggling to access and sustain adequate housing after fourteen years of austerity and neglect. In particular, we question the underlying driver of the housebuilding target and ask whether the Labour government’s apparent desperation for economic growth is subsuming concerns for social justice, despite the increase in support for social housing – a debate with wide international resonance in the current economic context. Finally, we scrutinise whether the rapid start out of the blocks on housing policy can be maintained for the inevitable marathon that is necessary to make significant changes to the UK housing system.

This paper explores the complex process of hybridisation of third-sector housing and support organisations (TSOs) in Northern Ireland. The focus of the study is the policy field of housing-related support services, known in the UK as ‘Supporting People’. This is a hybrid policy field involving several government departments, a number of market mechanisms and two types of third-sector actors. The exercise of organisational agency to adapt to competing drivers is illuminated through mental health and homelessness case studies. The paper explores how competing external influences from the Northern Ireland Assembly, horizontal policies for the third-sector and vertical service commissioning policies interact with TSOs’ own adaptation strategies involving the deployment of robust third-sector identities. Hybridisation is found to involve not only the dominance of state drivers and the promotion of market mechanisms in both fields, but also enactment of third-sector identities. Our analysis of hybridization in this case counters Billis’ (2010) representation of third-sector identity as weak, in flux, and subject to erosion by focusing on the agency of TSOs to strategically adapt to and negotiate external drivers and thereby achieve competitive advantage. Through the enactment of identity in this adaptation process, resources such as legitimacy, charitable income and volunteers are secured. This provides opportunities for policy makers to add value if they are prepared to emphasise horizontal over vertical policy goals.

The article examines how nonprofit organization staff navigate organizational mission as they encounter complex systems problems outside their area of expertise, focusing on environmental organizations encountering homelessness in river watersheds. Drawing on surveys from seventy-three individuals from forty-three organizations and interviews with seventeen nonprofit staff, I find that staff who demonstrate systems thinking are more likely to describe integrating complex systems problems into their mission and activities in meaningful ways. Not interacting with systems issues due to lack of skill is most often explained with language of mission adherence and avoiding mission drift.

Philosophical accounts of discrimination distinguish the question of what discrimination is from the question of its wrongfulness. This article addresses these two questions in the context of anti-homeless hostile design of public spaces. Regarding the first question, all forms of anti-homeless hostile design amount to discrimination, with typical cases (for example, anti-homeless spikes or benches) being direct discrimination, but with some cases (for example, CCTV not intended to target the homeless) being indirect discrimination. Regarding the second question, it is argued that all major accounts of the wrongness of discrimination identify the usual, directly discriminatory hostile design as wrongful on account of its harmful or disrespectful character. Most accounts also consider the less common indirectly discriminatory hostile design to be possibly wrongful, especially given the severe disadvantages faced by the homeless in contemporary cities.

This article analyzes the interconnected translation processes that led the Paris city council to conceptualize, address, and act upon “homelessness” through counting. By translation, we mean a range of semiotic processes that connect social worlds, their objects, practices, genres, and bodies of expertise. These are usually imagined as separate: For example, auditing and volunteering, science and government, charity and policing, poverty and social hygiene. Our analysis is based on ethnographic data collected in Paris, France, between January and August 2023, during two editions of the Nuit de la Solidarité [Night of Solidarity], a large-scale effort by the city council, in collaboration with numerous volunteers, to count homeless people in Paris. Linking translation scholarship with academic work on quantification and liberal governmentality, we demonstrate that the semiotic process of translation is deeply interconnected with the political work performed by numbers and counting techniques, imbuing them with meaning and ensuring their capacity to exert power. Translation, we show, serves not only to link governance techniques across geopolitical borders but also to integrate various political projects and normalize and naturalize the structural inequalities that define cities like Paris.

Tokyo Governor Koike Yuriko’s vision of a city where everyone can “shine” masks systemic contradictions in Japan’s future-making endeavors. While public proclamations frame Tokyo as inclusive and equitable, actions by Koike’s administration reveal abiding inequities. These efforts align with decades-long projects, most recently manifested in Society 5.0 and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which prioritize market-driven growth while erasing systemic concerns of poverty and homelessness. Ethnographic insights from advocacy groups highlight the necessity of cultivating meaningful alternatives that emphasize empathetic dignity—a critique that underscores the necessity of reimagining Japan’s trajectory beyond performative policies of technologically mediated utopia futures.

This article provides an overview of individuals with schizophrenia who become unhoused and explores current approaches to managing this severe illness in those who often do not want care or believe they need it. Individuals with schizophrenia and who are unhoused face numerous adverse consequences including premature mortality and increased rates of suicide. There is a dearth of research evidence demonstrating efficacy of the Housing First (HF) model and harm reduction approach in decreasing psychotic symptoms in individuals with schizophrenia. Ensuring medication adherence in individuals with psychosis, both housed and unhoused, is important to prevent delays in untreated psychosis and chronic deterioration.