Homelessness
How can we better understand the relationship between homelessness and social exclusion?
Contacts
Exploring and understanding the links between homelessness and social exclusion, and their causes.
Our work under this area aims to ensure that policy and practice responses to homelessness are more informed by evidence from research and the voices of those with personal experience of homelessness.
The main programme is a partnership initiative between the Economic and Social Research Council, Homeless Link, Communities and Local Government, the Tenant Services Authority and Department of Health. This has three specific objectives:
- to move thinking beyond organisational or legislative categories of homelessness by starting from the perspectives of those with experience of homelessness and multiple social exclusion;
- to develop a strong theoretical understanding of the causes of 'multiple exclusion homelessness', i.e. where homelessness is just one dimension of social exclusion, which might also include poverty, worklessness, mental health problems and drug/alcohol misuse;
- to better understand how homelessness and multiple social exclusion relate to each other.
Key findings from earlier work
- Data on the scale of homelessness (note - this data is limited to young people who are in contact with services) indicates that at least 75,000 young people experienced homelessness in the UK in 2006-07. Numbers of young people accepted as homeless have fallen in England and Wales in the last three years.
- Young people from disadvantaged socio-economic backgrounds and/or experiencing disruption or trauma in childhood are at increased risk of homelessness, and a significant minority experienced violence in the parental home.
- Homelessness can instigate or compound existing mental health and/or drug misuse problems amongst young people.
- There is a strong association between homelessness and withdrawing from education, employment or training, with a lack of agreement between the welfare benefit system and employability initiatives.
- Models of temporary accommodation for young people were well developed, although further clarity was needed as to whether some should be short-term or more 'transitional' accommodation. Nonetheless, there remained a lack of suitable emergency accommodation and move-on housing options. 'Floating', non-institutional support was widely available and appeared successful.
- Another study looking at enforcement of interventions against street users found that individuals involved in street activities were highly vulnerable; almost all had experienced substance misuse and/or mental health problems, a history of trauma and homelessness.
- The researchers concluded that it is impossible to predict with certainty the outcomes of enforcement measures for any individual street user. The impacts are potentially very negative for some street users, such as diversion into more dangerous activities or spaces and the possibility of lengthy prison sentences. Enforcement is therefore a high-risk strategy, only to be used as a last resort, and never with very vulnerable street users such as those with severe mental health problems.
Key question for the current programme
- How can we better understand the causes of multiple exclusion homelessness?
- What is the view of those affected by deep social exclusion about the relative importance of the different difficulties they face?
- What is the degree of overlap between various deeply socially excluded groups?