Community-informed anti-stigma interventions for homelessness: a qualitative consultation

The stigmatization of and discrimination toward people experiencing homelessness is a pervasive challenge to addressing and ending homelessness, and limited research has examined perceptions of interventions that could be implemented to reduce homelessness stigma. We conducted a three-hour community consultation workshop with people with lived experiences of homelessness and people who work in the homelessness sector (n = 25) to examine such perceptions. Building on a framework of mental health stigma interventions, we used thematic analysis and identified three categories: Educational, social activism, and interpersonal contact interventions. Educational interventions include: 1) having policymakers experience what it is like to be homeless, 2) humanizing people experiencing homelessness, and 3) creating public service announcements about the health detriments of homelessness. Social activism interventions include: 1) utilizing social media, television, and celebrity platforms to change perceptions of homelessness and 2) highlighting success stories of people with current or former experiences of homelessness. Interpersonal contact interventions include: 1) fostering informal connection with people experiencing homelessness and 2) creating volunteer opportunities involving people experiencing homelessness. Future research should design and test interventions to understand which are most effective in shifting public perceptions of homelessness and which should be implemented on a larger scale.