XPost: alt.society.homeless, alt.abuse.offender, sac.politics
XPost: ca.politics, alt.fan.rush-limbaugh

https://ciceroinstitute.org/research/sex-offenders-an-overlooked-but- significant-subpopulation-of-the-homeless/

Executive Summary
The homeless population in the United States is very diverse. Over the
last decade, scholars have made considerable progress in advancing our understanding of the various subpopulations and the myriad drivers of homelessness that are associated with each. But even as researchers have
found a history of criminal offending in a sizeable proportion of homeless people, analyses of criminal history and homelessness remain simplistic
and underdeveloped. Homeless sex offenders present a special case of
interest within this subpopulation because of their unique set of social
and legal barriers to housing and their risk profile, which is exacerbated
by homelessness.

This study investigates the prevalence of homelessness among registered
sex offenders in 41 states and, in turn, compares those findings to state- level homelessness data from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) to determine the extent to which sex offenders are a prominent subpopulation of homelessness. The use of Point-in-Time Count
data, which is known to undercount unsheltered homeless individuals,
creates many limitations to the results, but given the PIT Count’s use by officials, it still provides useful information to policymakers. The
results of this study indicate that more than 10 percent of unsheltered homeless populations are registered sex offenders in 32 states, and more
than half are registered sex offenders in eight states. As a proportion of total homeless populations, only nine states had more than 10 percent registered sex offenders. Median results for homeless sex offenders were
higher than those of all HUD-tracked unsheltered homeless subpopulations selected for comparison and were similarly sized to all but two of the HUD-tracked total homeless subpopulations selected for comparison. No geographic patterns were tested conclusively, but results show some
evidence of higher proportions of sex offenders among unsheltered homeless
in the Midwest, northern Mountain West, and Southern New England. The
results of this study should inform policymaking and practice in states
where sex offenses are a sizeable subpopulation, as this population has
several distinctive risks and needs that may not be well addressed by conventional homelessness interventions. Moreover, this study aims to spur additional research into the connection between sex offenses and
homelessness, especially in relation to public safety implications and potential drivers of the variability in homeless rates of sex offenders
among states.

Introduction
The U.S. had 771,480 homeless individuals living in shelters or on the
street, according to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban
Development’s (HUD) Annual Homeless Assessment Report (AHAR) delivered to Congress at the end of 2024.1 The report showed homelessness has increased across subpopulations, with nearly every category reaching record levels.2 These increases held across geographical regions as well, with all but
seven states seeing a rise in the number of homeless people.3 As America’s homelessness crisis worsens, scholars and policymakers alike have sought a better understanding of homeless people and the reasons they may have
become homeless.

One of the largest studies of homelessness to date, Kushel et al. (2023), surveyed 3,200 homeless people in California and interviewed more than 300
to understand the backgrounds of homeless individuals better.4 The
findings were remarkably diverse, indicating that homeless people come
from a broad cross-section of society and end up homeless due to a variety
of economic, social, legal, and personal factors.5 There was, however, a surprisingly consistent theme that the report found, but did not explore
in as much depth: incarceration for criminal offenses. Kushel et al.
(2023) found that 37 percent of homeless people had been to prison in
their lifetime, and 79 percent had been to jail.6 One in five had entered
their recent episode of homelessness following a prison or long jail
sentence. But many were also victims of crime—half reported physical or
sexual violence, with 15 percent experiencing sexual violence
specifically.7 Yet, even in this exploration of criminal justice
involvement, very little nuance was afforded to different types of
criminal offenders or how that could impact their loss of housing or
ability to attain new housing successfully. In particular, sex offenders,
who arguably face the steepest personal, social, and legal barriers to
housing and reintegration after prison, were not even mentioned in the
report.8


Very few homelessness advocacy and research centers have given sex
offenders attention. The research databases of the National Alliance to
End Homelessness, the Homelessness Policy and Research Institute at the University of Southern California, and the Initiative on Health and Homelessness at the Harvard Chan School of Public Health do not contain a single reference to sex offenders or the restrictive policies they face in finding a place to live. The database at the Benioff Homelessness and
Housing Initiative at the University of California at San Francisco turns
up only one result from a search of the term “sex offender”—a blog post
about potential sex offense prosecution for public urination.9 Though a commonly held misconception, it is extremely rare for an individual to be prosecuted and placed on a sex offender registry for public urination.10

While homelessness scholars have largely ignored the connection between
sex offenders and homelessness, criminologists have not. Harris, Levenson,
and Ackerman (2014) found that two to five percent of the nation’s
registered sex offenders are homeless, a significantly higher rate than
that of the general population, which sits below one percent.11 But even
that measure masks the true relevance of sex offenders to homelessness
research and policy, as it captures the proportion of sex offenders who
are homeless, but not the proportion of homeless people who are sex
offenders. This study seeks to address that research gap by comparing the population of homeless sex offenders in 41 states to the general homeless population to investigate the relevance of sex offenders as a
subpopulation worthy of more consideration by scholars, advocates, and policymakers. The particular interventions that may be appropriate to or effective in addressing homelessness in this subpopulation are beyond the
scope of this study, but some ideas for further research will be
suggested.

Existing Subpopulations of Homelessness

Scholars and policymakers generally understand that the homeless
population is not a monolith. HUD’s Annual Homelessness Assessment Report
to the U.S. Congress divides the homeless population into broad
subpopulations: individuals without families, families with children, unaccompanied youth, veterans, and the chronically homeless.12 The HUD Continuum of Care Homeless Populations and Subpopulations report includes further subcategorization based on age, race and ethnicity, gender
identity, and characteristics of severe mental illness, substance abuse,
HIV status, and exposure to domestic violence.13 Culhane (2019) explored
the rapidly growing and uniquely challenging subpopulation of elderly homeless,14 Metraux and Culhane (2004) examined the interrelationship
between the burgeoning U.S. prison population and the reemergence of homelessness in the early 2000s.15 The authors of the latter found that
between 4.2 and 13.1 percent of offenders released from prison were housed
in a shelter after release, a number which varied considerably based on
the severity of the offense, though their study notably did not consider
the specific category of sexual offenses. Still, the findings suggested
that former criminal offenders may constitute a distinct subpopulation.
Kushel et al. (2023) found that, two decades later, almost 80 percent of homeless individuals in California, who account for approximately half of
the nation’s homeless population, had some form of criminal history that resulted in incarceration in jail or prison.16 That study also found that
a combined two-thirds of homeless individuals used some type of hard
narcotic, and more than 80 percent experienced some form of mental
illness.17 These findings suggest that some of these characteristics may
not constitute distinct subpopulations but rather represent nearly
universal characteristics of the homeless population.


Despite Kushel et al.’s (2023) comprehensiveness, especially compared to
the various HUD reports and smaller-scale studies, the authors still
failed to identify sex offenders as a distinct subpopulation or even a
category of interest.18 HUD does make a reference to sex offenders in the regulations for its homelessness programs, 24 CFR 578.93(b)(4), which
provides programs with the discretion to exclude sex offenders if the
program also includes children.19 However, homelessness scholars have
almost entirely avoided the subject of sex offenders. Among policy organizations that work on both homelessness and criminal justice, the
Urban Institute is one of the few that has produced reports that even
mention this intersection, though even their research is from decades ago. Roman and Travis (2004) offered the most direct consideration of the
subject in their study of prisoner reentry and homelessness, identifying
social stigma, pressure on landlords, exclusionary criteria for shelters
and housing programs, and legal residence restrictions as unique
challenges for sex offenders leaving prison that may increase their
likelihood of homelessness.20 The only other mentions of sex offenders and homelessness by the Urban Institute were far more limited. Theodos,
Popkin, Guernsey, and Getsinger (2010) praised an innovative program for
the “hard to house” but noted it excluded sex offenders.21 And Burt et al. (2010) made passing mention of exclusionary program eligibility criteria
for people with criminal histories, including sex offenders. They
recommended that those requirements be reduced, though the authors stopped short of calling for those changes specifically for sex offenders.22

Sex Offenders and Homelessness
The primary source of information on the intersection of sexual offending
and homelessness is within criminological literature on the challenges
that the population faces during re-entry, especially due to the litany of restrictions to which they are subjected upon release, which scholars
suggest increase homelessness. Harris, Levenson, and Ackerman (2014) found
that between two and five percent of the nation’s registered sex offenders
are homeless, a finding reaffirmed by state-specific studies such as those
of South Carolina (Cann and Scott 2020) and Delaware (Metraux and Modeas 2023).23,24,25 The potential reasons for such a high rate of homelessness
among registered sex offenders are many, ranging from individual-level
factors (e.g., cognitive functioning and childhood trauma) to community-
level and social structural factors (e.g., public policy, housing affordability, and social stigmatization).

Individual-Level Causes of Sex Offender Homelessness
Research on individual-level factors influencing sex offender homelessness
is relatively limited, though several studies hold homelessness as an implication of their findings. Lee, Tyler, and Wright (2010) do not
explicitly mention sex offenders, but they theorize the ways in which at-
risk populations become homeless due to a combination of personal vulnerabilities and experiences, which holds considerable relevance for
sex offenders.26 Levenson, Willis, and Prescott (2016) found that male sex offenders were several times as likely to report high adverse childhood experiences (ACE) scores compared to the general male population.27 Liu et al.’s (2021) systematic review and meta-analysis found a high prevalence
of high ACE scores among the homeless population, offering additional
insight into Levenson, Willis, and Prescott’s (2016) findings.28
Similarly, findings from Joyal et al. (2013) and Stone, Dowling, and
Cameron (2018) present a possible connection between the high prevalence
of low cognitive functioning among sex offenders and an overrepresentation
of low cognitive functioning among the homeless population.29–30 Although
there are a few studies that approach the issue of individual-level
factors that may drive sex offender homelessness, this area of research is critically underdeveloped.

Community-level Causes of Sex Offender Homelessness
Far more research has focused on the impact of various structural factors
on sex offenders. Sex offenders are subjected to a wide variety of
policies in different states, though these policies tend to fall into four categories: registration, community notification, residence restriction,
and civil commitment.

Registration Policies
The first state to require sex offenders to register with law enforcement
was California, which did so in 1947.31 The original intention of sex
offender registries was to provide investigators with a ready-made list of possible suspects in the vicinity of a crime. However, their usefulness to
the criminal justice system grew to include providing prosecutors with additional leverage in negotiating plea deals and allowing law enforcement
to use charges for an offender’s failure to register or other violations
as a stand-in for crimes they could not prove.32 By 1996, all states had created some form of sex offender registry.33 The U.S. Congress’s passage
of the Adam Walsh Act in 2005 established a national registry to which all states were required to contribute, including offenses dating back to the 1970s.34 The Adam Walsh Act also required states to instruct law
enforcement to inform the public when sex offenders were being released
from prison through so-called “community notification” policies, though
not every state is in full compliance with that law.35

Community Notification Policies
Community notification policies vary in content far more than registration policies, which are similar in purpose, though distinct in structure and governance, across states. Despite federal requirements of the Adam Walsh
Act, fewer than half of the states have some form of community
notification policy, and those that do differ considerably in the scope
and implementation of their policies. On one end is California, which
leaves notification policies up to local law enforcement agencies; on the
other is Alabama, which requires law enforcement to distribute leaflets
with identifying information about the released sex offender to everyone
living within 1,000 feet of the offender’s residential address.36 Lasher
and McGrath (2012) systematically reviewed the literature on policies
related to sex offender community notification and their potential impact
on employment and housing opportunities.37 A significant number of studies found an impact, though only the more active forms of community
notification, such as those in Alabama, were associated with social destabilization related to employment or housing.38


Residence Restrictions
Sex offender residence restrictions, which legally prohibit sex offenders
from living in certain areas commonly associated with children, under
criminal penalty, are by far the most widely explored sex offender policy
as it relates to homelessness. The work of J.S. Levenson has explored the
ways these sex offender residence restrictions create collateral
consequences for sex offenders far beyond their prison sentence or even
the challenges associated with other felony offenses. Levenson and Cotter (2005) surveyed sex offenders about how they navigate the effects of a
Florida law forbidding them from living within 1,000 feet of schools and daycares.39 The authors found that more than half of sex offenders found
it more difficult to attain affordable housing, and just under half were
unable to live with supportive family members because their residences
fell within an exclusion zone.40 A similar survey in Indiana found that
nearly two-thirds of sex offenders feared they might become homeless as a result of residence restrictions in that state.41 Sex offenders surveyed
in a study by Mercado, Alvarez, and Levenson (2008) reported that they had
to move more frequently because of residence restrictions, a finding
affirmed by Rydberg et al.’s (2018) quasi-experimental study that found
that sex offenders were twice as likely to move more than three times
following release from prison after a statewide residence restriction went
into effect.42–43 Frequent residence movement is strongly associated with homelessness.44

The two strongest studies that investigated the potential of residence restrictions to increase sex offender homelessness were Socia, Levenson,
and Ackerman (2014) and Cann and Scott (2020).45–46 Socia, Levenson, and Ackerman (2014) conducted regression analyses of residence restrictions
along with a number of other variables to test their relationships with
the prevalence of homeless sex offenders in different counties in
Florida.47 The results showed that a one-percent increase in geographic coverage by a residence restriction in a county led to a one-percent
increase in the number of homeless sex offenders.48 Cann and Scott (2020) analyzed the change in the homeless rate of the South Carolina sex
offender registry over more than a decade to examine the potential impact
of that state’s sex offender residence restriction law.49 The authors
found a significant increase in sex offender homelessness following the adoption of the law, but they could not isolate the impact from other
potential explanations.50

Civil Commitment
The U.S. is unique in its policy of civilly committing some sex offenders
to psychiatric institutions under distinct procedures from all other types
of psychiatric commitment. This practice began in the early twentieth
century as part of a movement to classify sex offenders, especially those
who committed crimes against children, as “sexual psychopaths.”51 It was relatively unusual for child molesters to receive prison sentences until
after the mid-twentieth century.52 Before then, child molesters most often received probation sentences, and some were committed to psychiatric institutions in connection with their offending patterns. The latter half
of the twentieth century brought a dramatic shift in policy towards sex offenders, with increased reliance on long prison sentences and, for a few decades, little attention to obsolete or repealed sexual psychopath
laws.53

Renewed interest in the civil commitment of sex offenders came towards the
end of the twentieth century, with states adopting a new paradigm called “sexually violent predator” laws.54 These laws allow states to designate certain sex offenders as sexually violent predators, which became a
special classification within the sex offender registry that has
heightened community notification requirements and permits prosecutors to petition courts to civilly commit such offenders to psychiatric
institutions under a lower standard than applies to the general
population.55 Instead of requiring individuals to exhibit signs of severe mental illness and present an immediate danger to themselves or others as evaluated by a psychologist, sexually violent predators need only be shown
to have a “mental abnormality,” a vague standard that falls outside of the Diagnostics and Statistical Manual (DSM) and essentially allows for broad confinement of offenders who would otherwise not meet commitment
criteria.56 Because the presence of a mental condition justifies civil commitment, sexually violent predator laws have a pretext of treatment.
Miller (2010) points out that treatment is fairly limited in these
facilities, and committees have strong disincentives to participate in treatment or discuss their crimes or underlying sexual deviance.57 The
result is that those committed tend to stay in psychiatric facilities for periods that may exceed their original prison sentence.58

Importantly, civil commitment of sexually violent predators need not
happen in lieu of prison. Rather, prosecutors can petition for commitment
upon release from prison or even after the individual is back in the
community. These laws have been the subject of significant litigation, but ultimately, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Kansas v. Hendricks (1997)
that they did not violate the Fourteenth Amendment’s protections of due
process or against double jeopardy.59 By 2006, more than 4,500 individuals
were committed under sexually violent predator laws nationwide.60

While sexually violent predator statutes may seem less directly relevant
to homelessness, it is worth considering that sex offenders who exhibit
the highest degrees of mental and social dysfunction and whose crimes
would be the most severely stigmatized in the community (such as those who might be classified as sexually violent predators) could be at
particularly high risk of homelessness. But if those individuals are
committed to psychiatric facilities indefinitely, then they are not
homeless. Thus, it is possible that sexually violent predator statutes,
unlike the other sex offender policies, could reduce sex offender
homelessness through indefinite incapacitation. However, for those sex offenders who are eventually released from psychiatric institutions, homelessness is a very high risk.61


Existing literature on sex offenders describes many relevant individual-
level and community-level risk factors for homelessness. However, it has
failed as of yet to establish sex offenders as a legitimate subpopulation
of homelessness worthy of attention from researchers and policymakers.
Although research has established that sex offenders have higher rates of homelessness than the general public, it is not yet clear what proportion
of the general homeless population is on the sex offender registry, and it
is that question that this study aims to answer. This study has
considerable relevance to policy because of the complexities of this population, both in terms of risk profile and the policies to which they
are subjected. This study raises further questions about how those
complexities may hinder the effectiveness of certain homelessness
interventions but will require further research to answer.

Methodology
This study will use the basic statistical functions of the Statistical
Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) software to analyze the prevalence
of sex offenders within the homeless populations of 41 states. Although
there is a national sex offender registry overseen by the Sex Offender Sentencing, Monitoring, Apprehending, Registering, and Tracking (SMART)
Office of the U.S. Department of Justice, that database is comprised of submissions from 50 separate sex offender registries across the country.
Each state registry is separately developed and managed, leading to
variability in the quality and labeling of data. While each state
maintains a registry and reports data to the national registry, most
states are out of compliance with the Adam Walsh Act to some degree, contributing further to the variability in structure and access among
states.62 Of 50 states, nine were removed from this study’s sample for
various reasons, including refusal of access (Minnesota), inability to
provide homeless-specific data (Nevada, New York, Maine, Michigan, West Virginia), or no response (Mississippi, Oregon, South Carolina).

State-level datasets were collected in a variety of formats, including
Excel sheets with all the state’s sex offenders, databases scraped using
the DataMiner plugin, and aggregate counts with no additional context sent
by registry managers in response to Freedom of Information Act requests.
Each dataset was cleaned to eliminate duplicate entries, offenders who
lived out of state, were in prison, deported, institutionalized, or had a verified address. The remaining sex offenders were divided into two
categories: those labeled as homeless or a related term, or who had an
address that described a state of homelessness (e.g., under a bridge or
living in a tent), and those with no address or listed as “whereabouts unknown.” Importantly, sex offenders who listed their address as a
homeless shelter or transitional housing provider are not labeled as
homeless in registries, even though they would be considered homeless by
HUD’s definition of homelessness for the Point-in-Time (PIT) Count.63 The decision not to include sex offenders who are not labeled as “homeless” or “address unknown” but may, in fact, be homeless as defined by HUD was
necessary due to the difficulty in matching addresses and the large number
of states in which no such data collection would even be possible given
the structure and availability of the registry. This decision does,
however, imply that this study undercounts HUD-defined homelessness on the registry, though evidence that sex offenders are excluded from most
homeless shelters suggests that the underestimation may be relatively
marginal.

The decision to keep the data explicitly labeled as “homeless” separate
from the data labeled “no address” was informed by prior literature on the
sex offender registry that attests to the ambiguity of the latter
category. The primary limitation of the “no address” dataset is that it is unclear whether the individuals in this category are homeless or if they
simply did not provide the required information that would allow them to
be categorized otherwise.64 While it may seem intuitive to include
offenders who are missing or who have absconded in this category,
offenders who are out of compliance are listed separately within each
registry. Cann and Scott (2020) make note of this problem and ultimately decided not to include sex offenders with no address in their sample, with
the acknowledgment that this would likely mean their research undercounts homelessness and thus provides only a conservative estimate.65 The present study addresses this issue by conducting two comparisons: one between sex offenders labeled as homeless and general homeless data and the other
between a combined dataset of sex offenders labeled as “homeless” and
those labeled “no address,” which, in effect, creates an upper and lower
bound of the proportion of the homeless population who are sex offenders.

The final major decision about the data was which general homelessness
dataset to use for the comparison. HUD’s annual census, the Point-in-Time Count, provides the homeless population for each state. Even acknowledging
the limitations of the Point-in-Time Counts’ rudimentary data collection methods, they remain the most consistent data on homelessness—and the most widely used. The Point-in-Time Count data is divided into two major
categories: unsheltered and sheltered homeless.i State sex offender
registries, however, do not specify the type of homelessness as defined by
HUD. Moreover, both the sex offender registry and HUD’s Point-in-Time
Count classify homelessness as binary and not a spectrum for the purposes
of data collection, which in turn ignores potentially relevant but fluid categories of housing insecurity, a severe limitation raised by Socia, Levenson, and Ackerman (2014).66 While all of these categories can
certainly be problematized, a few insights from other scholars informed
how this study decided which categories of homelessness it deemed
relevant. First, Rolfe, Tewksbury, and Schroeder (2017) investigated
homeless shelters in Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio, and Tennessee. They found
that 71 percent of homeless shelters in those states had policies to
refuse admission of sex offenders, with a nearly equal number conducting
sex offender registry checks upon entrance.67 Stucky and Ottensmann (2014) excluded from their research a group of sex offenders who had listed
homeless shelters as their address and were thus not labeled as homeless,
which suggests that sex offenders explicitly listed as “homeless” or “transient” are likely best categorized as unsheltered homeless.68 While
these two studies suggest that unsheltered homelessness is the most
appropriate categorization because of the relative ambiguity, this study compares the homeless sex offender population to both the unsheltered
homeless and total homeless (combined sheltered and unsheltered)
populations.

For each of the 41 states examined in this paper, four proportions will be created: (1) the number of registered sex offenders listed as homeless
compared to the unsheltered homeless population; (2) the number of
registered sex offenders listed as “homeless” or “address unknown”
compared to the unsheltered homeless population; (3) the number of
registered sex offenders listed as “homeless” compared to the total
homeless population; (4) the number of registered sex offenders listed as “homeless” or “address unknown” compared to the total homeless population.

i A related issue that is not as pressing for the purposes of this study
is that sex offenders who were homeless but have been provided with
permanent supportive housing through a HUD homelessness program are not considered homeless by HUD or by the sex offender registry. Therefore,
they would not be included in this sample, though it could be an area for future research to see how successful such programs are at moving sex
offenders off the street at scale.

Results
Across the 41 state sex offender registries examined, a total of 21,583 individual sex offenders were identified as homeless, and another 8,796
sex offenders were classified as “address unknown.” These figures were
analyzed primarily in comparison to the unsheltered and total homeless population at the state level, but an average figure using the combined
sample and the combined unsheltered and total homeless populations is also included in Figure 1.

Each of the four measures comparing registered sex offenders and
homelessness among the 41 states analyzed has wide variability. Figure 1
shows the results for all states in the sample (N = 41) across all four measures, and then the results for each measure are reported in more
detail individually. Results were categorized as small (0.00-0.10), medium (0.10-0.20), large (0.200.50), and exceptionally large (0.50).

Figure 1: Results of Registered Sex Offenders and Homeless Point-in-Time
Count Comparison by State


The number of states with similar proportions of unsheltered homeless populations on the sex offender registry listed as homeless is reported in Figure 2. The proportions ranged from 0.1 in New Jersey and New Mexico to
0.74 in Delaware, with the true maximum value of 1.57 in Wisconsin noted
as an exceptional outlier.ii Arkansas was not included in this portion of
the analysis because its registry could only provide sex offenders whose addresses were unknown and not explicitly labeled homeless. Nearly half of
the sample (N = 19) had proportions between 0.01 and 0.10, indicating a
small subpopulation of sex offenders within the unsheltered homeless population. Nine states’ proportions fell between 0.10 and 0.20,
indicating a medium-sized subpopulation. Eight states had proportions
between 0.20 and 0.5, indicating a large subpopulation, while one-fifth (N
= 4) had proportions above 0.50, indicating an exceptionally large subpopulation of sex offenders within the unsheltered homeless population.
The four states with proportions above 0.50 were Illinois (0.50), Nebraska (0.61), Delaware (0.74), and Wisconsin (1.57). The average result across
the whole sample, weighted for population, was 0.09.

iiWisconsin’s 1.57 value implies that there are more registered sex
offenders listed as homeless than there are unsheltered homeless people in
the state. A few possible explanations are that the Point-in-Time Count

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