Attitudes Toward Park and Recreation Agency Actions in Support of People Experiencing Homelessness

Abstract

Park and recreation providers are increasingly called upon to interface with and serve an unhoused user population. However, park and recreation agency policies are often inconsistent with increasingly progressive societal attitudes toward the issue of homelessness and people experiencing homelessness. Despite the growing salience of this issue, there is a relative lack of information regarding attitudes toward agency actions intended to support people experiencing homelessness. In this note, we use panel survey data to provide descriptive information and group comparisons via independent samples t-tests that we believe will prove useful for practitioners, policy makers, and researchers in this context. Our results indicate that while respondents are largely supportive of this type of agency action, park users, younger people, and those who are more affluent and economically conservative are more supportive of actions intended to support people experiencing homelessness.