Women’s Homelessness: European Evidence Review

Abstract

Across Europe, homelessness amongst women has tended to be categorised as a relatively minor social problem, a subcategory of homelessness, which is disproportionately experienced by lone adult men.This interpretation of the nature of homelessness in Europe is founded on a misconception.3 There are three core errors in how women's homelessness has been defined and enumerated in Europe.They can be defined as intersecting errors centred on spatial, administrative and methodological flaws.3 Three variables in relation to women's experience of living rough have yet to be fully addressed in current methodologies for enumeration: Evidence that women avoid emergency shelters designed for people sleeping rough; women experiencing living rough make serious efforts to conceal their gender and their location; women may be more likely to rely on informal arrangements, staying with friends, relatives and acquaintances, making their homelessness less likely to be visible. REVIEWWomen's Homelessness: European Evidence Review 63 The gender dynamics of youth homelessness are under-researched.Associations with mental illness might mean that, in a wider context in which women are more likely to be diagnosed with mental illness than men that young women may be at greater risk of homelessness when a mental health problem occurs.Risks around sexual abuse exist for both genders but may be present at a greater rate and to a greater degree for young women.3 There are evidence gaps around women parents with dependent children who become homeless and comparatively little research overall on family homelessness, compared to the very large amount of research on lone adult men and in some EU Member states, family homelessness has been increasing.3 For women experiencing homelessness on a long-term and recurrent basis their needs are often high and complex and can often exceed those of men in a similar position.The effects of widespread experience of gender-based violence are combined with severe mental illness, addiction, contact with the criminal justice system and, often, forced separation from children.3 Women only seek accommodation through the formal channels of homelessness services when they have exhausted all alternative informal options.3 Explanations for service avoidance among women frequently draw attention to women's awareness of male-dominated spaces as well a fear of victimisation within services that are oriented primarily towards men but there are also other, possibly more complex, reasons why women avoid seeking help or accommodation such as stigma and shame.3 Studies have documented the lack of control experienced by women within homelessness services, highlighting ways in which prevailing practices within services produce feelings of objectification and a sense of powerlessness and loss.Negative perspectives held by women on the homelessness services they access also appear to be closely associated with experiences of infantilisation.3 Available research evidence provides a compelling argument for models of service provision that are informed by women's own perceptions and experiences of the service systems they navigate.This requires acknowledgement of women's agency; of their knowledge and resources and their capacity to articulate their experiences and needs.3 Homelessness services remain focused on responding to the most urgent and basic needs of women through the provision of shelter or short-to medium-term accommodation.There is no reliable information available on the extent to which women-only homelessness services are available in countries throughout Europe.There is a clear need for research that examines the extent to which the types of services available to women who experience homelessness reflect and respond to their needs.3 Domestic violence and homelessness are frequently classified and understood as discrete processes and historically, across most European countries, service responses to domestic violence and to homelessness have been separate in their organisation, structure and aims.3 Housing First services for women experiencing homelessness can reduce the concerns that barriers to services that are designed for men, on the false assumption that almost all homelessness involves lone men, should fall away because this is a service model that gives a woman her own, ordinary, home.Research has shown that a service built by women and run by women could achieve high rates of success in sustained rehousing for women with very high and complex needs.3 The evidence base on women's homelessness has improved and the nature of the debates in policy and research has changed.However, all the different dimensions of women's homelessness still remain under-researched across Europe.

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