Housing Histories and Homeless Careers: A Biographical Approach

Abstract

Though distinctions are commonly drawn between the long-term and more recently homeless, our understanding as to the nature and shape of what Randall refers to as 'homeless careers' is limited as are our understandings of the dynamics driving those careers. This is because studies of homelessness have seldom incorporated a longitudinal dimension or have worked with only a simplistic and incomplete picture of homeless people's housing histories. The paper argues for the adoption of a biographical approach in studies of homelessness and reports on the first complete set of accommodation biographies constructed with single homeless hostel users. It is shown that, rather than fitting a description of either the long-term or more recently homeless or following a progressive 'drift' into homelessness, the majority of men interviewed had in fact experienced numerous homeless episodes in the past but with each of these episodes being of relatively limited duration and separated by much longer periods in (their own) accommodation. Examining the nature of that accommodation, it is shown that the housing careers of these men had been almost entirely dominated by the use of poor quality and often insecure private rented bedsits and flats whilst almost all had simultaneously been either long-term or permanently unemployed. With few additional 'vulnerabilities' to help account for their frequent returns to homelessness the paper challenges a conventional 'political model' of single homelessness to explain these men's homeless careers in relation to their position of multiple structural disadvantage. The paper contrasts these biographies with the biographies of those who were either visibly homeless for the first time or who better fitted a description of the truly long-term homeless and concludes by outlining the ways in which a biographical approach might further our understanding of single homelessness more broadly and enable the formulation of more appropriate responses to the problems of homelessness.