Homelessness, pathways to exclusion and opportunities for intervention

Irving, Adele; Harding, Jamie; Laing, Mary

Abstract

Brief: This research was funded by the Webb Memorial Trust and examined the origins of
poverty and exclusion among a sample of homeless people. The Webb Memorial Trust
was established in 1947 as a memorial to the socialist pioneer Beatrice Webb, who
undertook studies of the origins of poverty, most notably through the 1909 Minority
Report to the Poor Law Commission.

Introduction: When studying the origins of poverty and exclusion, homeless people are a particularly
appropriate group to choose because, as David Seymour noted in 2009 in a report for
the Joseph Rowntree Foundation: A smaller number of people are in much deeper poverty.
Homeless people are among those at the extreme end in the UK. It is not just those sleeping on the
streets but those who lack a proper, secure home…
In the study described in this summary, researchers sought, through wide ranging
interviews, to establish causes of poverty among homeless people and to identify points
where intervention by services might have reduced or prevented the levels of exclusion
that respondents experienced.

Methodology: Eighty-two homeless people were interviewed at a range of projects across the
North East of England. Among the themes covered on the interview schedule were
childhood, education and training, significant life events, the future, employment,
income and debt, health and disabilities, becoming homeless, needing homelessness
services, crime and institutionalisation, drugs and alcohol, marriage, family and social
networks, housing history, family and friends.

Summary of Findings: The key finding of the research was that there were two distinct pathways into
homelessness, a ‘lifelong’ and a ‘life events’ pathway. While not every participant fitted
clearly into one or other of these pathways, they represented a helpful lens through
which to examine respondents’ accounts of their lives.

The respondents as a group were clearly disadvantaged in childhood, with an over-
representation of factors such as being in local authority care, living in rented housing,
non-attendance at school, leaving school without qualifications and having few career
ambitions. Two factors which appeared to have a particularly damaging effect and were
often linked, were experiences of parental addictions and domestic violence.
There was a high incidence of traumatic experiences in childhood, many of which involved
violence. Although the large majority grew up in a household where at least one person
was working, they tended to have spent their childhood in rented housing, suggesting
that some were part of the working poor.

These disadvantages were continued into adulthood, where rented accommodation
continued to dominate housing histories and where unemployment interspersed with
brief periods of insecure employment was the norm for many. However, there were
also respondents who reported a happy childhood, who had achieved qualifications
and skilled employment and who had enjoyed a stable relationship and housing
situation. For these people, their current situation of homelessness and poverty
seemed to be best explained by a traumatic event such as bereavement or relationship
breakdown, often accompanied by alcohol addiction.

Addictions had played a major part in the lives of respondents, both as children -
whether their own addiction or that of their parents - and as adults. While many felt
optimistic about the future and had set themselves realistic aims, their greatest fear was
often lapsing back into addiction.

Citation

Irving, A., Harding, J., & Laing, M. (2011). Homelessness, pathways to exclusion and opportunities for intervention. Cyrenians, Newcastle

• Report Type: Research Report
• Publication Date: Sep 1, 2011
• Deposit Date: Aug 30, 2024
• ISBN: 978-0-9565433-1-8