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Pathways to homelessness

While various causes of homelessness have been identified, the following observation remains pertinent:

Given the diversity of the contemporary population of homeless people, and the complex and multiple needs of homeless people, it is unlikely that explaining homelessness can be reduced to a single factor causal theory.¹¹¹

Rather than looking for ‘causes’ of homeless, MacKenzie and Chamberlain explored common pathways into homelessness. They identified three homeless ‘careers’: a ‘youth career’ and two adult careers: one precipitated by a housing crisis, the other by family breakdown. The authors also note that some adults enter homelessness as a young person and remain in this situation up into adulthood. The types of legal issues facing people as they move though each of these ‘career’ trajectories have implications for the type and timing of intervention and support that may be needed. Below is a discussion of these trajectories.

‘Youth career’ pathway

The ‘youth career’ pathway focuses on young people leaving home before they have the capacity to live independently. The move out of home tends to be precipitated by family conflict. This may involve conflict between the young person and the parent(s) about behavioural boundaries or particular issues (e.g. the young person’s sexuality) or arise from family violence, abuse or neglect. Hoogland observed:

Most children leave because they have no real choice—because of serious abuse, sustained family conflict or complete family breakdown, poverty, social isolation, and a sense of hopelessness that places near-intolerable stresses on families.¹¹²

In the current study one participant commented:

I was made homeless when I first left home. I told my parents that I wanted to go to university. I come from a cattle property. ‘You don’t want to be a grazier, fuck off.’ So I left. I had a car and a pillow. I knew what I was going through. I knew I had this attraction to men and thought that I must be gay. That caused problems for my family. I was thrown out of home when I returned because I was gay. I ended up living with a youth counsellor—he took on kids in a small mining town in Queensland, and I ended up living in a youth refuge.¹¹³

MacKenzie and Chamberlain note that there is often a period when the young person is in and out of home and still at school. The young person may initially stay with other family or friends, with some moving onto crisis or SAAP accommodation.

The reasons given by young people for seeking SAAP assistance are consistent with this pathway. During 2002–03, ‘relationship/family breakdown’ was cited as the main reason for seeking SAAP support in nearly 17% of support periods given to young men and 21% of those to young women aged under 25. Other main reasons for seeking support given by men and women under age 25 were:

• eviction (15% males, 11% females)
• financial difficulty (13% males, 10% females)
• their usual accommodation was unavailable (13% males and 9% females)
• domestic violence (10% females, 1% males)
• ‘time out from family or other situations’ (8% of support periods to males and 10% to females).¹¹⁴

Physical, emotional or sexual abuse was cited as a reason for seeking support in 5% of support periods to young women. This may be underreported in SAAP figures as some young women do not want to disclose the abuse.¹¹⁵

Adult pathways: housing crisis career

The housing crisis pathway acknowledges the fundamental role of poverty and escalating debt in causing homelessness.¹¹⁶ In the households from which these homeless people come, the main income earner tends to be either outside the labour market or long-term unemployed.¹¹⁷ The shift to homelessness may be very sudden, facilitated, for instance, by illness or injury, family breakdown, unmanaged debt, loss of employment and no resources to accommodate this situation. As Mackenzie and Chamberlain note, “once adults lose their accommodation there is a sharp break and their problems usually get worse. Many move into the homeless population for a sustained period of time and some adapt to homelessness as a ‘way of life’”.¹¹⁸

MacKenzie and Chamberlain suggest that this pathway probably accounts for the largest proportion of the homeless population. This contention is supported by SAAP data.

The following reasons were prominent among the most commonly cited ‘main reasons’ clients sought support from NSW SAAP services in 2002–03:

• usual accommodation unavailable (10% of all support periods)
• financial difficulty (11% )
• eviction/ending of previous accommodation (10%)
• recent arrival to area with no means of support (6%).¹¹⁹

Adult pathways: family breakdown

When people leave home due to family breakdown, Mackenzie and Chamberlain report that there is commonly a period when people move in and out of their family home a number of times, particularly when domestic violence is involved.¹²⁰ Support agencies are often not notified of the problems until the situation is very serious.¹²¹ By this stage, crisis responses to find accommodation become the priority.

Again this pathway is reflected in the ‘main reasons’ provided by clients for seeking SAAP accommodation. In 2002–03, domestic violence was the most frequently cited ‘main reason’ for seeking SAAP support in NSW (18% of all support periods), with ‘relationship/ family breakdown’ accounting for a further 11% of support periods and ‘time out from family/other situation’ cited as the main reason in a further 5% of support periods. However, domestic violence was the main reason for seeking assistance in 39% of support periods to women alone aged over 25 and in 51% of support periods to women with children.¹²² While these figures are high, they may still underestimate the extent of domestic violence among women leaving home.

Often women are …reluctant to label experiences of abuse in relationships as domestic violence, citing relationship difficulties or substance abuse as the presenting reason.¹²³

The Commonwealth Family Homelessness Prevention Pilot (FHPP), a federal project involving partnership between Centrelink and other community service providers to prevent homelessness among families, also revealed a high incidence of family violence and family conflict among the 242 families assisted.¹²⁴

Transition from youth to adult homelessness

A third point of entry to adult homelessness is the transition from youth homelessness. While there is some evidence that early intervention to get young people to return home or to find appropriate alternative accommodation may be working,¹²⁵ some young homeless people remain homeless into their adult lives. Mackenzie and Chamberlain found that by the time these young people make the transition to adult homelessness, many have issues with drugs, alcohol or mental health, have had contact with Juvenile Justice, are unemployed, and are extremely poor and marginalised. Thus, at this point, they require intensive support. However, intervention at this late stage is less likely to be successful.¹²⁶

Finally, it should be noted that there is considerable overlap between each of the different ‘pathways’. For instance, for many people the experience of family breakdown will be tied up with financial hardship and the loss of accommodation. Generally, however, the consultations with service providers and homeless people in the current study, as well as the published data and academic literature, support the type of framework identified by MacKenzie and Chamberlain.