Safety and security in small-scale recovery housing for people with severe mental illness: an inner-city case study

The authors examined the lived experience of residents with severe mental illness in a small-scale recovery-housing building in the inner city. They attempting to identify and understand factors that influenced adjustment and stability.

Four focus groups with 17 residents and participant observation with residents, case managers, and supervisory staff were conducted longitudinally over a two-year period. Data were analyzed according to the tenets of qualitative content analysis.

Safety and security was the most prominent issue raised by residents. Serious concerns about this issue could be divided into three categories: threats raised by the behavior of other residents (and their associates), threats raised by strangers, and threats related to loss of self-control. A related theme involved ongoing tension between residents' desire for communal connections and their conflicting desire for a bounded private life.

Ongoing attention to the issue of safety and security should be a key component of recovery-oriented housing in inner-city residential areas. Further research may need to compare the experience of safety and security among residents living in recovery housing with the experience of those in independent scatter-site housing and traditional congregate housing.