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Housing for People with Serious Mental Illness

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The Palgrave Handbook of American Mental Health Policy

Abstract

This chapter summarizes the state of knowledge on the housing arrangements of people with serious mental illness (SMI) in the United States. Americans with serious mental illness have the legal right to live in as integrated housing as feasible and we estimate that more than 90% of people with SMI live in the community and not in institutions or specialized programs. However, the lack of affordable housing, discrimination in the rental market, difficulties accessing community-based health services, and insufficient benefits still contribute to people with serious mental illness being at greater risk for homelessness, inadequate or unaffordable housing, or incarceration. This chapter describes what we know about the housing situations of people with SMI, the challenges they face in the rental housing market, and the effectiveness of different program models for providing housing and services. The chapter concludes with a discussion of emerging topics for research and policy on housing for people with SMI.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Metropolitan Housing and Communities Policy Center, The Urban Institute, Washington, DC, USA

    Josh Leopold

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  1. Josh Leopold
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Maryland, School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD, USA

    Howard H. Goldman

  2. Department of Health Care Policy, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA

    Richard G. Frank

  3. Cecil G. Sheps Center for Health Services Research, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC, USA

    Joseph P. Morrissey

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Leopold, J. (2020). Housing for People with Serious Mental Illness. In: Goldman, H., Frank, R., Morrissey, J. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of American Mental Health Policy. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-11908-9_14

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