Focus Ireland provided funding for this PhD thesis by Clíodhna Bairéad. It employs statistical analysis of administrative data on single adult users of emergency accommodation for homeless people in Dublin. Together with theories of ‘housing transitions’ and the structural, experiential and life course factors which shape these, a new framework has been generated to analyse, explain and predict patterns of entry and exit from homelessness and of emergency accommodation use. This analysis has the potential to inform the reform of homeless service to maximise rates of exit from homelessness.

This thesis employs statistical analysis of administrative data on single adult users of emergency accommodation for homeless people in Dublin. Together with theories of ‘housing transitions’ (e.g. Beer, et al, 2011; McNaughton, 2008) and the structural, experiential and life course factors which shape these, a new framework has been generated to analyse, explain and predict patterns of entry and exit from homelessness and of emergency accommodation use. In addition to making an original theoretician and empirical contribution to research on homelessness this analysis has the potential to inform the reform of homeless service to maximise rates of exit from homelessness. The data, which cover the period 2016-2018, are drawn from a local government managed on-line database which records each homeless person's emergency accommodation use, their demographic characteristics, personal histories and medical and addiction treatment. They were collated, cleaned and analysed using a variety of statistical techniques including, descriptive statistics, crosstabulation reports and cluster analysis.

This analysis suggests that extensive literature on homeless emergency accommodation use underestimates the importance of stability of service use in predicting chances of exiting homelessness. Many homeless people use this accommodation solely for short-term emergency housing and then leave without support. However, very stable emergency accommodation users, who use this accommodation for 95% or more of their period of homelessness, are more likely to remain homeless for longer and to need support (eg, social housing provision) in order to exit. Patterns of emergency accommodation entry, usage and exit also vary significantly across the life course and depending on prior and concurrent significant life crises. Homeless people of all ages are highly likely to have experience of institutional living in prison, residential care or mental health or additional treatment facilities for instance. For young people entry to homelessness is associated with breakdown of relationships with parents or caregivers.