‘There’s nothing I can do to stop it’: homelessness among autistic people in a British city

Abstract

Autistic people appear to have a higher risk of becoming and remaining homeless than people without autism. This article is based on a wider research study exploring diverse homelessness experiences in Oxford, UK. Using life mapping, a visual research method, we gained verbal and visual accounts of participants’ housing and homeless histories. These accounts support past evidence of higher than expected levels of autism among homeless people, while highlighting for the first time specific, additional risks of homelessness among autistic people. This group also appeared to have fewer means to reduce the risk of homelessness, and faced multiple challenges to resolving their homelessness. Our findings extend existing understandings of autism and homelessness, and of the disabling practices that autistic people may face within the diversity of homeless experiences, while adding valuable biographic detail to the factors leading to homelessness and attempts to exit homelessness. We also discuss potential policy interventions.

Points of interest

• Recent evidence suggests that people on the autism spectrum are more likely than people without autism to experience homelessness, and their homeless experiences may also be different

• We asked people who were or recently had been homeless, to draw and talk about their housing and homeless histories, exploring a wide range of homeless experiences, including street homelessness, living in hostels, and temporary housing

• We found an unexpectedly high number of autistic people in our sample, suggesting that people on the autism spectrum may be at higher risk of homelessness. Autistic people also had fewer means of avoiding homelessness, and faced particular challenges to resolving homelessness

• Our findings can inform local councils and homelessness services about the barriers autistic people may face within these systems. We urge that policies and ways of working be made more autism-aware and so improve the lives of autistic homeless people

Keywords:

• Autism
• homelessness
• pathways
• socio-economic disadvantage
• narrative
• visual methods

Acknowledgements

Sincere thanks are due to our participants for sharing their time and experiences with us. We are grateful to Dr Alasdair Churchard and Dr Will Mason for their insightful comments on previous drafts.

Disclosure statement

The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

Additional information

Funding

This study was supported by the John Fell Fund at the University of Oxford and Lucy Group Ltd.