Beyond Securing a tenancy: using the capabilities approach to identify the daily living needs of individuals during and following homelessness

Individuals experiencing homelessness have a range of unmet needs during homelessness. Less is known about how these daily living needs evolve in the transition to housing and how existing services are supporting individuals to meet these needs. Using the capabilities approach, we conducted a cross-sectional qualitative study with two participant groups (unhoused; housed between 1 and 24 months). Using thematic analysis, we generated five meta-themes to describe the experiences and compare these two groups: (1) Managing mental health and substance use; (2) Creating connection and community; (3) Involvement in something meaningful; (4) Emotional adaptation to impoverished living conditions; and (5) The helping relationship as foundation. Our findings indicate that for individuals to thrive following homelessness, researchers, service providers, and policymakers need to design and implement strategies that target outcomes beyond tenancy sustainment. These key strategies include: (1) facilitating access to resources that enable thriving following homelessness; (2) developing measures that orient programs and policies to target thriving rather than sustaining a tenancy; and (3) including persons with lived experiences of homelessness in the design and delivery of services and in the evaluation of new and existing programs.