Costs and pathways of homelessness: developing policy-relevant economic analyses for the Australian Homelessness Service System

The aim of this project is to help lay foundations for the development of robust economic evaluation and costing relevant to Australian homelessness policy and service delivery. The report tackles this in several ways. First, it explores a range of promising approaches to understanding and estimating the costs of homelessness and homelessness interventions, particularly those relevant to analysis at the broad policy level. Our focus is on the range of ‘pathways’ approaches to costing, which we investigate with reference to recent research and methodological discussion from Australia, the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom. We discuss strategic, practical and technical issues pertinent to the selection and implementation of these methods in the Australian context. The intention is to provide a map of possibilities, rather than a detailed instruction manual or a comprehensive review of relevant literature and data sources. [Executive summary]