"Making a Homeless Person Even More Homeless … It's a Necessary Evil": The Health and Safety Complexities of Service Restrictions as Perceived by Emergency Shelter Staff

Abstract

Service restrictions involve people experiencing homelessness being banned from an emergency shelter in response to a violation of program policies. Their use can be a pathway into unsheltered homelessness and reliance on other institutional services. However, the prevalence of service restriction use and the perspectives of shelter staff toward the practice are unknown. Accordingly, this mixed-methods study used a one-phase QUAL(quan) embedded design to examine the reasons for implementing service restrictions, as recorded by shelter staff in administrative data and their perceptions of the practice, with a focus on impacts. Two sources of data were used: [1] semi-structured interviews with 30 staff working in shelters in Toronto, Canada, and [2] administrative data from 2014-2021 on the reasons for service restriction issuance across Toronto’s shelter system. Assault, and threatening or violent behaviour were common reasons for service restriction and had increased in recent years. Despite the prevalence of their use, service restrictions were perceived as a necessity (“necessary evil”) by shelter staff, but could also challenge and unsettle staff due to the potential for further harms to people experiencing homelessness (“making a homeless person even more homeless”). Improving violence prevention approaches, developing alternative responses for non-violent behaviours that violate shelter policies, and implementing training and support interventions to enhance workplace mental health and wellness among shelter staff could address underlying issues linked to service restrictions.