Hostname: page-component-f554764f5-rj9fg Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-04-09T02:40:50.235Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Women’s Experiences of Homelessness: A Longitudinal Study

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 January 2020

Joanne Bretherton
Joanne Bretherton*
Affiliation:
Centre for Housing Policy, University of York E-mail: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Drawing on the results of a qualitative longitudinal analysis of the experiences of homeless people using an employment related programme in the UK, this article explores the experiences of homeless women. Research focused on women’s trajectories through homelessness remains unusual and this comparatively large study provided an opportunity to look at a group of homeless women over time. The results from 136 in-depth interviews with forty-seven homeless women are reported. The interviews explored their lives prior to becoming homeless, their routes into homelessness and their trajectories through and out of homelessness. The article does not compare experiences across gender, focusing solely on women, because the existing evidence base focuses largely on the experiences of lone homeless men. The goals of the article are twofold, first to add to the existing evidence on women’s experiences of homelessness and second to add to emergent debates on whether gender is associated with differentiated trajectories through homelessness.

Keywords

Homelessnesshomeless womenlongitudinaltrajectories
Type
Articles
Information
Social Policy and Society , Volume 19 , Issue 2 , April 2020 , pp. 255 - 270
Copyright
© Cambridge University Press 2020

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

Anderson, I., Kemp, P. and Quilgars, D. (1993) Single Homeless People, London: HMSO.Google Scholar
Aubry, T., Klodawsky, F. and Coulombe, D. (2012) ‘Comparing the housing trajectories of different classes within a diverse homeless population’, American Journal of Community Psychology, 49, 1–2, 142–55.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Baptista, I. (2010) ‘Women and homelessness in Europe’, in O’Sullivan, E., Busch-Geertsema, V., Quilgars, D. and Pleace, N. (eds.), Homelessness Research in Europe, Brussels: FEANTSA, 163–86.Google Scholar
Baptista, I., Benjaminsen, L., Busch-Geertsema, V. and Pleace, N. (2017) Family Homelessness in Europe, Brussels: FEANTSA.Google Scholar
Benjaminsen, L. and Andrade, S.B. (2015) ‘Testing a typology of homelessness across welfare regimes: Shelter use in Denmark and the USA’, Housing Studies, 30, 6, 858–76.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Benjaminsen, L. (2016) ‘Homelessness in a Scandinavian welfare state: the risk of shelter use in the Danish adult population’, Urban Studies, 53, 10, 2041–63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bowpitt, G., Dwyer, P., Sundin, E. and Weinstein, M. (2011) ‘Comparing men’s and women’s experiences of multiple exclusion homelessness’, Social Policy and Society, 10, 4, 537–46.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bretherton, J., Hunter, C. and Johnsen, S. (2013) ‘‘You can judge them on how they look…’: homelessness officers, medical evidence and decision-making in England’, European Journal of Homelessness 7, 1, 69–92.Google Scholar
Bretherton, J. and Pleace, N. (2016) Crisis Skylight: Journeys to Progression - Second Interim Report of the University of York Evaluation, London: Crisis.Google Scholar
Bretherton, J. (2017) ‘Homelessness and gender reconsidered’, European Journal of Homelessness 11, 1, 1–22.Google Scholar
Bretherton, J. and Pleace, N. (2018) Women and Rough Sleeping: A Critical Review of Current Research and Methodology, London: St Mungos.Google Scholar
Busch-Geertsema, V., Edgar, W., O’Sullivan, E. and Pleace, N. (2010) Homelessness and Homeless Policies in Europe: Lessons from research, Brussels: European Commission.Google Scholar
Busch-Geertsema, V. (2010) ‘Defining and measuring homelessness’, in O’Sullivan, E., Busch-Geertsema, V., Pleace, N. and Quilgars, D. (eds.), Homelessness Research in Europe, Brussels: FEANTSA, 19–40.Google Scholar
Busch-Geertsema, V., Benjaminsen, L., Filipovič Hrast, M. and Pleace, N. (2014) The Extent and Profile of Homelessness in European Member States: A Statistical Update, Brussels: FEANTSA.Google Scholar
Carr, H. and Hunter, C. (2008) ‘Managing vulnerability: homelessness law and the interplay of the social, the political and the technical’, Journal of Social Welfare and Family Law, 30, 4, 293–307.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chamberlain, C. and Johnson, G. (2013) ‘Pathways into adult homelessness’, Journal of Sociology, 49, 1, 60–77.10.1177/1440783311422458CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clark, J. P. (2003) ‘How to peer review a qualitative manuscript’, in Godlee, F. and Jefferson, T. (eds.), Peer Review in Health Sciences, 2nd edn, London: BMJ Books, 219–35.Google Scholar
Dobie, S., Sanders, B. and Teixeira, L. (2014) Turned Away, the Treatment of Single Homeless People by Local Authority Homelessness Services in England, London: Crisis.Google Scholar
Drake, M. (1987) Review of Sophie Watson with Helen Austerberry, ‘Housing and Homelessness: A Feminist Perspective’, Journal of Social Policy, 16, 2, 289–91.10.1017/S0047279400020602CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dyb, E. (2017) ‘Counting homelessness and politics: the case of Norway’, European Journal of Homelessness, 11, 2, 15–37.Google Scholar
Edgar, B. and Doherty, J. (eds.) (2001) Women and Homelessness in Europe – Pathways, Services and Experiences, Bristol: The Policy Press.Google Scholar
Fondation Abbé Pierre and FEANTSA (2019) Fourth Overview of Housing Exclusion in Europe 2019, Brussels: FEANTSA: https://www.feantsa.org/public/user/Activities/events/OHEEU_2019_ENG_Web.pdf [accessed 12.06.2019].Google Scholar
Fitzpatrick, S. and Pleace, N. (2012) ‘The statutory homelessness system in England: a fair and effective rights-based model?’, Housing Studies, 27, 2, 232–25.10.1080/02673037.2012.632622CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gilmore, B., McAuliffe, E., Power, J. and Vallières, F. (2019) ‘Data analysis and synthesis within a realist evaluation: toward more transparent methodological approaches’, International Journal of Qualitative Methods, 18, 1–11.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gowan, T. (2010) Hobos, Hustlers, and Backsliders: Homeless in San Francisco, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hansen Löfstrand, C. and Quilgars, D. (2016) ‘Cultural images and definitions of homeless women: implications for policy and practice at the European level’, in Mayock, P. and Bretherton, J. (eds.), Women’s Homelessness in Europe, London: Palgrave Macmillan, 41–73.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Harding, R. and Hamilton, P. (2009) ‘Working girls: abuse or choice in street- level sex work? A study of homeless women in Nottingham’, British Journal of Social Work, 39, 6, 1118–37.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jackson, K. and Bazeley, P. (2019) Qualitative Data Analysis with Nvivo, London: Sage.Google Scholar
Johnson, G., Parkinson, S. and Parsell, C. (2012) Policy Shift or Program Drift? Implementing Housing First in Australia, AHURI Final Report, 184, Melbourne: Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute.Google Scholar
Johnson, G., Robar, D. C. and Zhu, A. (2017) Women’s Homelessness: International Evidence on Causes, Consequences, Coping and Policies, Melbourne: Melbourne Institute Working Paper, 7, 17.Google Scholar
Jones, A. (1999) Out of Sight, Out of Mind: The Experiences of Homeless Women, London: Crisis.Google Scholar
Jones, A. and Pleace, N. (2010) A Review of Single Homelessness in the UK 2000–2010, London: Crisis.Google Scholar
Kemp, P. A., Neale, J. and Robertson, M. (2006) ‘Homelessness among problem drug users: prevalence, risk factors and trigger events’, Health and Social Care in the Community, 14, 4, 319–28.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kuhn, R. and Culhane, D. P. (1998) ‘Applying cluster analysis to test a typology of homelessness by pattern of shelter utilization: results from the analysis of administrative data’, American Journal of Community Psychology, 26, 2, 207–32.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lee, B. A., Tyler, K. A. and Wright, J. D. (2010) ‘The new homelessness revisited’, Annual Review of Sociology, 36, 501–21.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Löfstrand, C. and Thörn, C. (2004) ‘The construction of gender and homelessness in Sweden’, Open House International, 29, 2, 6–13.Google Scholar
Marcuse, P. (1988) ‘Neutralizing homelessness’, Socialist Review, 88, 1, 69–97.Google Scholar
Mayock, P. and Sheridan, S. (2012) Women’s ‘Journeys’ to Homelessness: Key Findings from a Biographical Study of Homeless Women in Ireland, Women and Homelessness in Ireland, Research Paper 1, Dublin: School of Social Work and Social Policy and Children’s Research Centre, Trinity College Dublin.Google Scholar
Mayock, P., Sheridan, S. and Parker, S. (2015) ‘‘It’s just like we’re going around in circles and going back to the same thing…’: The dynamics of women’s unresolved homelessness’, Housing Studies, 30, 6, 877–900.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mayock, P. and Bretherton, J. (eds.) (2016) Women’s Homelessness in Europe, London: Palgrave Macmillan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mayock, P., Bretherton, J. and Baptista, I. (2016) ‘Women’s homelessness and domestic violence: (in)visible interactions’, in Mayock, P. and Bretherton, J., Women’s Homelessness in Europe, London: Palgrave Macmillan, 127–54.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McNaughton-Nicholls, C. M. (2009) ‘Agency, transgression and the causation of homelessness: a contextualised rational action analysis’, European Journal of Housing Policy, 9, 1, 69–84.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Meert, H. and Bourgeois, M. (2005) ‘Between rural and urban slums: a geography of pathways through homelessness’, Housing Studies, 20, 1, 107–25.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Metraux, S., Culhane, D. P., Raphael, S., White, M., Pearson, C., Hirsch, E., Ferrell, P., Rice, S., Ritter, B. and Cleghorn, S. J. (2001) ‘Assessing homeless population size through the use of emergency and transitional shelter services in 1998: results from the analysis of administrative data in nine US jurisdictions’, Public Health Reports, 116, 344–52.10.1016/S0033-3549(04)50056-0CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Metraux, S., Manjelievskaia, J., Treglia, D., Hoffman, R., Culhane, D. P. and Ku, B. S. (2016) ‘Posthumously assessing a homeless population: services use and characteristics’, Psychiatric Services, 67, 12, 1334–9.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
National Audit Office (2017) Homelessness, London: NAO.Google Scholar
Neale, J. (1997) ‘Homelessness and theory reconsidered’, Housing Studies, 12, 1, 47–61.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Niner, P. (1989) Homelessness in Nine Local Authorities: Case Studies of Policy and Practice, London: HMSO.Google Scholar
O’Flaherty, B. (2010) ‘Homelessness as bad luck: implications for research and practice’, in Ellen, I. G. and O’Flaherty, B. (eds.), How to House the Homeless, New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 143–82.Google Scholar
Parsell, C. and Parsell, M. (2012) ‘Homelessness as a choice’, Housing, Theory and Society, 29, 4, 420–34.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Phillips, R. (2000) ‘Politics of reading: cultural politics of homelessness’, Antipode, 32, 4, 429–62.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pleace, N., Fitzpatrick, S., Johnsen, S., Quilgars, D. and Sanderson, D. (2008) Statutory Homelessness in England: The Experience of Families and 16-17 Year-Olds, London: Department for Communities and Local Government.Google Scholar
Pleace, N. and Bretherton, J. (2013) Measuring Homelessness and Housing Exclusion in Northern Ireland: A Test of the ETHOS typology, Belfast: Northern Ireland Housing Executive.Google Scholar
Pleace, N. and Bretherton, J. (2014) Crisis Skylight an Evaluation: Year One Interim Report, London: Crisis.Google Scholar
Pleace, N. (2016) ‘Researching homelessness in Europe: theoretical perspectives’, European Journal of Homelessness 10, 3, 19–44.Google Scholar
Pleace, N. (2016a) ‘Exclusion by definition: the under-representation of women in European homelessness statistics’, in Mayock, P. and Bretherton, J. (eds.), Women’s Homelessness in Europe, London: Palgrave Macmillan, 105–26.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pleace, N., Knutagård, M., Culhane, D. P. and Granfelt, R. (2016) ‘The strategic response to homelessness in Finland: exploring innovation and coordination within a national plan to reduce and prevent homelessness’, in Nichols, N. and Doberstein, C. (eds.), Exploring Effective Systems Responses to Homelessness, Toronto: Canadian Observatory on Homelessness.Google Scholar
Pleace, N. and Bretherton, J. (2017) Crisis Skylight: Final Report of the University of York Evaluation, London: Crisis.Google Scholar
Quilgars, D. and Pleace, N. (2016) ‘Housing First and social integration: a realistic aim?’, Social Inclusion, 4, 4, 5–15.10.17645/si.v4i4.672CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Quilgars, D. and Pleace, N. (2018) The Threshold Housing First Pilot for Women with an Offending History: The First Two Years, York: University of York.Google Scholar
Reeve, K. with Goudie, R. and Casey, R. (2007) Homeless Women: Homelessness Careers, Homelessness Landscapes, London: Crisis.Google Scholar
Reeve, K. (2018) ‘Women and homelessness: putting gender back on the agenda’, People, Policy and Place, 11, 3, 165–74.Google Scholar
Scutella, R. and Johnson, G. (2018) ‘Psychological distress and homeless duration’, Housing Studies, 33, 3, 433–54.10.1080/02673037.2017.1346787CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shinn, M., Weitzman, B. C., Stojanovic, D., Knickman, J. R., Jimenez, L., Duchon, L., James, S. and Krantz, D. H. (1998) ‘Predictors of homelessness among families in New York City: from shelter request to housing stability’, American Journal of Public Health, 88, 11, 1651–7.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Somerville, P. (1992) ‘Homelessness and the meaning of home: rooflessness or rootlessness?’, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 16, 4, 529–39.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Somerville, P. (2013) ‘Understanding homelessness’, Housing, Theory and Society, 30, 4, 384–415.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Toohey, S. M., Shinn, M. and Weitzman, B. C. (2004) ‘Social networks and homelessness among women heads of household’, American Journal of Community Psychology, 33, 1–2, 7–20.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Vincent, J., Deacon, A. and Walker, R. (1995) Homeless Single Men: Roads to Resettlement?, Aldershot: Avebury.Google Scholar
Watson, S. with Austerberry, H. (1986) Housing and Homelessness: A Feminist Perspective, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.Google Scholar
Watson, S. (2000) ‘Homelessness revisited: new reflections on old paradigms’, Urban Policy and Research, 18, 2, 159–70.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wilson, W. and Barton, C. (2018) Comparison of Homelessness Duties in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, London: House of Commons Briefing Paper Number 7201, 5 April.Google Scholar
Zlornick, C., Robertson, M. J. and Lahiff, M. (1999) ‘Getting off the streets: economic resources and residential exits from homelessness’, Journal of Community Psychology, 27, 2, 209–24.3.0.CO;2-2>CrossRefGoogle Scholar