On a cold night in Multnomah County, Oregon, a person coping with grief and a lost home might find themselves couch surfing, sleeping in a car, or checking into a cheap motel — not on the street, but not housed either. That invisible middle ground, what researchers call "hidden homelessness," is where many journeys into homelessness quietly begin, according to a striking new report from Portland State University.
The report, titled "Without a Map: A Lived Experience Study of the Paths People Create Through Homelessness," is the work of the university's Homelessness Research and Action Collaborative (HRAC) and the OHSU-PSU School of Public Health. It's the second and final part of a study called Pathways. An earlier survey of 541 people found that 98% of unhoused participants want permanent housing — a number that cuts through any assumption that people choose to live outside.
This final report layers 29 in-depth "journey-mapping" interviews on top of those survey findings to trace how people actually navigate homelessness, what pulls them toward housing, and what pushes them back. Crucially, the research was co-designed with the TREES committee — a group made up entirely of people who have lived through homelessness. That means the study isn't looking in from the outside; it's guided by people who understand the patterns from within.
Lead investigator Kathleen Conte, an assistant professor at OHSU-PSU, explains what the researchers found: "Navigating homelessness is about much more than finding a service and saying yes to it." People are staying safe, meeting basic needs, proving they qualify for help, keeping relationships intact, and pushing through long waits and repeated setbacks all at once.
One of the report's most striking findings is that grief plays a hidden role. More than 30% of interview participants said the death of a loved one directly or indirectly contributed to their housing loss. Once unhoused, many became stuck in what participants called "the churn" — a loop where continuous effort bumps against system bottlenecks, missing ID documents, case manager turnover, and calls that never get returned. One participant described the current system bluntly: it "rewards maintenance, not transformation."
Yet the report also found moments when the system genuinely worked — when the right support, relationship, and opportunity lined up at just the right moment. Those exits felt less like a reliable pathway and more like a lucky break, which is exactly the problem the authors want to fix.
The report lays out six priorities: expanding diverse affordable housing, prioritizing prevention with early financial support and livable wages, and coordinating services into a transparent, accountable whole. As the TREES committee put it, "Numbers, charts and data are incredibly important, but remembering the humans living without housing and what those numbers represent should be the priority."