It’s a common claim among masculist and men’s rights circles that men are more likely to be homeless than women are; it’s a common counter-claim that most of the studies are done on single homeless people, and homeless women are more likely to have children and therefore not fall into this group. So I decided it was time to look up the actual numbers and see if homelessness is a gender problem or simply a poverty problem.
This article is going to be horribly Americanocentric, because I am extremely bad at finding the homelessness statistics for other countries. If you are non-American and have statistics on the gender ratio of homelessness, please leave them in the comments and I’ll add them to the post.
The National Coalition for the Homeless is one of the major homeless advocacy groups in the United States, and as it happens they have a fact sheet on who is homeless.
Most studies show that single homeless adults are more likely to be male than female. In 2007, a survey by the U.S. Conference of Mayors found that of the population surveyed 35% of the homeless people who are members of households with children are male while 65% of these people are females. However, 67.5% of the single homeless population is male, and it is this single population that makes up 76% of the homeless populations surveyed (U.S. Conference of Mayors, 2007).
In the United States, therefore, as of 2007, roughly 60% of homeless people are male: this suggests that the problem is somewhat gendered but not strongly gendered. However, some big shit has happened since 2007, most notably a recession, so we might want to look for more recent stats.
Unfortunately, it is very difficult to find more recent gender ratios that aren’t methodologically unsound (for instance, only counting sheltered homeless people); however, the most recent US Conference of Mayors report states that the number of homeless families has increased by nine percent while the number of homeless individuals has only increased by 2.5%, which suggests that while the number of homeless people has approached gender parity more closely there are still slightly more homeless men.
Within in UK, the Homelessness Monitor offers the following information about homelessness in England, which suggests that the situation is substantially the same:
[The gender ratio in other countries] contrasts with the position in England where the majority of those enumerated in the official statistics as statutorily homeless are families with children, most of them headed by female lone parents. But figures on rough sleeping and single homelessness in England reflect those in other countries by demonstrating an overwhelming majority of single men. In the UK, as elsewhere, the young homeless population tends to be fairly evenly split between young men and young women.
What does this mean?
First, it is necessary to consider aspects of the male gender role that might make men more likely to be homeless: for instance, men’s greater likelihood of being veterans, or the tendency of men to not seek treatment for their mental illnesses and substance abuse. Looking at it without the gender lens risks missing important aspects of gender.
Second, it is necessary not to erase the existence of women who are homeless. Even though men are more likely to be homeless, homelessness is a lot more gender equal than a lot of people present it. The primary causes of homelessness– poverty, lack of affordable housing, unemployment– affect everyone, regardless of gender. A large percentage of the increase in homeless families is probably caused by the recession: unemployment and lack of affordable housing were the two most commonly cited causes of the increase in homeless families.
Third, it is important to note that there may be reasons why women are more likely to be housed than men that still don’t mean the women are in a particularly good situation. For instance, women are more likely to participate in survival sex in exchange for housing. “Survival sex or homelessness,” however, is one of those dilemmas that really leaves no one in a particularly good situation.
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Are there stats about homeless youths? Okay, dumb question, but I think it might be worth looking into as well.
I know that minors that come out to their parents are abhorrently likely to suddenly find themselves homeless, and it would be curious to see the stats on that; if gay teenagers are more likely to be thrown out than lesbian teenagers, for instance.
I also just got a job with a guy (at least I think I did?) who voluntarily chose to be homeless as a young man because his family was so poor when he was growing up… I wonder if men are more likely to “willingly” choose homelessness as a way to try and help their family, or for pride reasons, or something, than women are. (His story had a happy ending, though: he now makes 6 figures a year working for Puma and writes YA books, the profits from which go to charity, apparently.)
For a UK perspective http://www.crisis.org.uk/data/files/publications/TheHomelessnessMonitor_141011.pdf is good. They note: As most other developed countries employ a definition of homelessness that heavily emphasises rough sleeping/shelter use, there is a consistent pattern whereby the great majority of households identified as homeless are single men, though rising numbers of
women and families are sometimes noted. This contrasts with the position in England
where the majority of those enumerated in the official statistics as statutorily homeless
are families with children, most of them headed by female lone parents. But figures
on rough sleeping and single homelessness in England reflect those in other countries by
demonstrating an overwhelming majority of single men. In the UK, as elsewhere, the
young homeless population tends to be fairly evenly split between young men and young
women.
It was noted in another doc (which I will try to find again and link) that for rough sleeping the ratio seems to be about 10 times as many men as women, and that 30% have spent time in prison (that seemed to be a much bigger correlate than military service, which I think was 8%.
@Ozy: Note that the source you are citing includes homeless as people sleeping in shelters and the like. The common claim I’ve seen is that men are much more likely to end up on the streets, partially because they face discrimination at shelters. So, the study you linked completely fails to address that topic.
Are there any direct statistics that measure like for like? E.G. the chances of getting sheltered if you’re a male or female single homeless adult?
Kinda like Lamech said, the definition is important. I have an old college friend who slept in his van (no, NOT down by the river) for the better part of two years. Was he homeless? Another friend hopped around, sleeping in the guest rooms of friends for two semesters at school – and frequently referred to herself as “homeless.”
What about squatters? Living in abandoned buildings where they may even have access to water, electricity or even wireless internet (all of which can be stolen easily.)
I would say that all of the above could be considered homeless because they didn’t own a home and/or have their name on a lease.
But those are a far, far cry from the people who have no place to turn to other than a bridge or park bench. It is that class of people that needs the most attention.
What I learned growing up, and possibly the situation has changed, is that there are stages to homelessness, and sleeping on the street is the last stage. Homelessness begins when you get evicted, and then you spend time “sofa-surfing” until you’ve worn out your welcome at all your friends’ and relatives’ houses, and then you exhaust whatever public housing or shelter options are available, and only then do you wind up as a visible “homeless person”. But people at every stage of this process are, in fact, homeless.
I think the kernel of truth in what the MRAs are saying, is that in the US, there seem to be charities and government groups that will give aid to women, children and either gender of elderly, but will not give assistance to an able-bodied man of working age. Because in our culture the expectation is that men and women who aren’t staying home with dependent children will support themselves.
Additionally, don’t some homeless shelters serve women and children, but not teenage males past a certain age. There may be significant unfairness there. I mean, are they implying that a very young man at a certain age is suddenly a menace to everyone else in the shelter?
I haven’t done the research, but would the lack of adequate support for homeless men align with a sense of ableism in how studies are done about homelessness? I know the common number is 90% of homeless have mental illnesses, though that is a number that is been much debated. Still, some of the more recent research places the numbers at 18-22 percent (Draine, Salzer, Culhane, & Hadley 569). But, again, this research ignores people living with families so, one could assume speaks to a higher percentage of homeless men. I’m not saying gender or abelism trumps the other, but might interlocking sets of stigmatization form around the figure of the homeless, and especially homeless men?
In South America the situation is much more dire than in the US. In Buenos Aires, for example, about half the population lives in poverty with about 200,000 living in squatters’ houses, 9,000 in low-end hostels run government and, roughly, 150,000 in private hostels. This doesn’t include the, roughly, 140,000 that live in shanty towns. It should be noted that, when one talks to many Europeans and Westerners, BA is considered one of the nicer, more developed South American cities. The situation is far worse in places like Lima, Bogota, Quito, etc.
“Unfortunately, it is very difficult to find more recent gender ratios that aren’t methodologically unsound (for instance, only counting sheltered homeless people); ”
To echo what Lamech said, that’s the rub. Homelessness is not a men’s problem because there are drastically more men than women at every stage of homelessness. It’s a men’s problem because help is more readily available to everyone else. Homelessness is also not a women’s problem because more homeless women are mothers. The fact that more homeless women are mothers is a sad commentary on the fact that there is more assistance available to single mothers than to intact families. So the first thing that happens is the man goes to live on the street while the woman receives support to maintain the present situation for as long as possible, after which the man is still in the street when she and the children move into a shelter and stay there as long as possible, after which the man is still in the street but she might possibly recover, extend the assistance she gets, or even win permanent housing.
One time a friend of mine had a gig on a get out the vote campaign and they found a woman with two babies sleeping on the carpet in an empty government-provided apartment. So the campaign workers collected money and bought them furniture. The point is, this woman was homeless and her story was very different from that of the father of her children who was most likely either in jail or living under a bridge. I don’t understand the callousness of someone who can look at a homeless man’s plight and not take into consideration that they’re not just some disposable male bum, but possibly a father who has been deprived of everything, even his own children, by a system that just doesn’t care. Consider how war veterans are incredibly likely to become homeless and imagine a war veteran who used to have a job and children, but now has nothing and is living in a state of mental illness with no help in sight. That is why homelessness is a men’s problem.
@noah: While they are all certainly homeless I would argue that couch surfing less bad then living in a shelter and less bad then living in a cardboard box. So when people say, men are significantly worse off because they can’t get into shelters and end up on the streets more, turning around and pointing out that if we include people in shelters it becomes nearly gender neutral, is completely missing the point.
One of the problems is (supposedly) that men don’t have access to shelters. The mentioned groups that won’t let even teenage boys in.
So yes, technically you are correct that the homeless levels appear to have gender equality*, but it doesn’t say anything about claims that men get less help when facing homelessness, other than possibly some people are sloppy with definitions.
*Well some people appear to say that 60%/40% means an issue is gendered when they look at other things.
I had a quick poke around the academic literature, and found this very thorough literature review.
http://www.igs.berkeley.edu/events/homeless/NewHomelessnessBook1.pdf
It is from 2001, but it references papers which show that the gender difference is statistically significant, and therefore real. I haven’t read the whole thing (I spent 30sec running text searches until I hit gender and significant in the same paragraph). The author quotes important info such as sample size and p-value for some of the data, which is a sign that the work has been done properly.
However the abstracts from more recent papers seem to take the gender difference as established in the field.
http://scholar.google.co.uk/scholar?hl=en&q=Homelessness+demographics+&btnG=Search&as_sdt=0%2C5&as_ylo=2009&as_vis=0
ozy, thank you thank you thank you thank you! It drives me *nuts* when I see it on The List plastered by MRA hijackers at feminist sites not only because of the methodology which you addressed, but since none of them ever bother to see it as anything other than a trump card or talk about how homeless single men are so often afflicted with mental illness as a cause or symptom.
@havebookswilltravel, the situation in the global south is indeed much more dire, and structured in a very different way. I won’t go into it here in detail, but if you would like to learn more about the different types of informal settlements (i.e. slums or shanty towns) and the 1 billion people in the world who live in them, the UN Habitat Program is a good place to start: http://www.unhabitat.org/categories.asp?catid=277 It’s estimated that by 2050 3 billion people could be living in informal settlements.
@ozy, did you look at all at how long different demographics of people tend to spend living on the streets? I did some research on this in a city where I was living, and found out that few people end up in the sleeping rough / at shelters type of homelessness for longer than 3 months. I believe only 5% of homeless people were homeless for more than a year. If we really want to help people, I think it’s extremely important to take a close look at what circumstances lead into and out of homelessness.
Fuck, at this point looks like I’m going to end up writing several posts on the topic of Men and Homelessness.
(This is how everything ends up growing to a thousand-post series. >.>) So far I’ve got the length of homelessness, shelter issues, and ableism/ageism/cisheterosexism/miscellaneous intersectionalities; if you’ve got another topic you want me to write about, hit me up. And, you know, if anyone wants to help their friendly neighborhood lazy Ozy and point zir to some more studies…
http://www.facs.gov.au/sa/women/pubs/general/womeninaustralia/2009/Pages/chapter5.aspx
According to the data the Australian Government has, 56% of homeless people in Australia are men. Also homeless men are less likely to seek out crisis accommodation and more likely to just rough it.
Hey Ozy, here’s a 2006 study from Austria: http://www.helixaustria.com/uploads/media/Kurzbericht_zu_Wohnungslosigkeit_in__sterreich_06-12.pdf
basic data starts on page 11:
60% male, 40% female
Page 12 shows a breakdown by age (50% are in the 30-50 age range)
Page 13 shows a breakdown by age and gender (the male homeless population is older than the female population)
I also found a German one which indicates that 25% of the homeless population are women, 64% men, and 11% kids under 18. 41% of the homeless population lives in family groups, 51% alone. 26% of that solitary homeless population is female: http://www.bag-wohnungslosenhilfe.de/fakten/Zahlenreihe_1999-2008.pdf BTW, this statistical definition of homelessness is exactly like Noah’s – if you don’t rent / own a stable place to live, you are homeless.
I think that NSWATM should hold a fundraiser for a homeless charity the same way in which it held one for RAIN last year. A couple months ago I raised $2500 for a homeless charity with two of my friends and it was a rewarding experience. I think that instead of misusing statistics to be skeptical about whether or not homelessness is a men’s issue, NSWATM can do what it claims that no MRAs ever do as well as earn some serious street cred on the issue.
Hm, over at F&F they seem to cite the same numbers yet come to a different conclusion:
Most studies show that single homeless adults are more likely to be male than female. In 2007, a survey by the U.S. Conference of Mayors found that of the population surveyed 35% of the homeless people who are members of households with children are male while 65% of these people are females. However, 67.5% of the single homeless population is male, and it is this single population that makes up 76% of the homeless populations surveyed (U.S. Conference of Mayors, 2007).
about 51% of all homeless adults are single men and about 17% are single women. Strangely, it gives no overall figures for homeless adults, but if the 3:1 ratio for single adults is applied to the remaining 32% of adults who aren’t single, that would give an overall percentage of 75% male and 25% female. Of course the fact that it’s been men who’ve lost 80% of the jobs during the past year may well mean that men make up more than 75% of the homeless, but we don’t seem to know that now. (http://glennsacks.com/blog/?p=4078)
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There was also this which I copied from an AvfM article, yet can’t for the heck of it find the source of that data in that huge pdf. Sigh
Unsheltered Homeless (2009) [http://www.societaldistress.org/files/HO-HAR2009.pdf]
Women – 12,000 – 4%
Men – 240,000 – 96%
If that is true, that is something I would find more problematic. Even though it is likely that that could be because of the fact that women are more likely to stay in families and those are more likely to be sheltered.
Before I forget, homelessness in Germany for 2006 is 11% kids, 25% women, 64% men. (http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obdachlosigkeit)
Now it feels like spamming, and of course I overlooked that the statistics for Germany were already posted…..sigh
It says this in the pretty large pdf I posted above:
Odds of Becoming Part of the Sheltered Homeless Population, 2009
Among all people in the United States, about 1 in 195 used a homeless residential facility at some time during the 12 month reporting period. The likelihood of using a residential homeless facility is much higher for some population groups (Exhibit 3-2). The highest risk groups are African Americans (1 in 67) and adult men (1 in 145). Among all those who are poor, about 1 in 25 is likely to enter shelter at some time during the year, and the variations among particular types of poor people are equally striking. Veterans (1 in 10), adult men (1 in 14), and African Americans (1 in 15) in poverty are at highest risk of becoming homeless. (page 26)
And even after looking through it several times I can not find the gender demographic of unsheltered adults. AvfM wrong on the data? (Original link here http://www.avoiceformen.com/feminism/feminist-governance-feminism/feminism-and-the-plague-of-male-homelessness/ )
I am glad someone is keeping records in UK (and elsewhere) on “rough sleeping”, as many in U.S. (no beds available in mental health institutions) are afraid of closes spaces and so–sleep under bridges, etc. There are actually people who work most days who–”sleep rough”! I once encountered a married couple who were BOTH suffering from this mental health syndrome who slept in–THEIR OWN BACKYARD in all weathers! The plight of the mentally ill, including veterans, has been much, much worse since Reagonomics shut off inpatient care for the majority who had previously qualified for such treatment. But guess what ELSE was triggered by Reagonomics? Deregulation of financial institutions! Which we now know is largely responsible for the worldwide deep recession, the 1% vs. the 99%, etc., etc., etc. Which we see is responsible for many entire families being homeless (been evicted or foreclosed on) today.
“Third, it is important to note that there may be reasons why women are more likely to be housed than men that still don’t mean the women are in a particularly good situation. ”
Quoted for agreement and just as an example of all the other points I agree with.
This is an issue where comparisons can be odious, stupid and harmful. There are all siorts of homelessness – short-term vs. lomng-tern, sheltered vs. rough-sleepins – but they are all very bad in their own way.
Is sleeping rough by yourself worse than sleeping in a very sketchy shelter with your kids where oyu worry every minute about thier safety? I can easily put myself into either situation and for me personally they are about equally undesirable. That probably applies to a lot of these comparisons.
Another issue that comes into this is personal autonomy. There is a small but significant population of long-term homeless with mental health issues. At what point on the spectrum of mentla health do we step in, do we have a right as a community to step in to force someone inot housing? How successful is that intervention likely to be and how harmful to the person? I don’tt even know all the questions let alone any of the answers.
@Jim, I think that in general there seems to be a shortage of housing. The homeless shelter across the street from where I once lived would have a line of homeless men waiting to come in and claim a bed every night of the week. You had to get in line and wait every day as it was first come first serve. But there were always more men than beds, so even having a bed the night before was no guarantee that yo would have a bed tomorrow. One of the many issues for the homeless is that amenities are few and far between, so finding shelter for the night might put someone at odds with going to a soup kitchen that offered better food. So in the warmer months, a lot of those men just wouldn’t bother, they’d just rough it and perhaps eat better and have an overall less stressful day.
As far as safety, I don’t really know if a shelter is that much more dangerous than any other place where the homeless congregate. But at least it’s a shelter. I once saw a visibly disturbed homeless man on a crowded beach in San Diego walk up behind another homeless man and stab him in the back in front of perhaps two hundred witnesses. And no one was close enough to stop it from happening because these both of them just smelled so bad. It was so surreal that people turned to each other and asked, “did that just happen?” I think even the cops who were patrolling the beach.
It’s been detailed already, but I’ll add my two cents.
If you define “homeless” as “not being beholden to a lease/mortgage/deed”, then men and women (and probably children of any genders) are homeless in equal amounts.
However, if you define “homeless” as “those hoboes on the street”, the ratio of men to women is *drastically* tilted in men’s’ disfavour. I live in New York City. If someone gave me a dollar for every street-bonded homeless woman who crossed my path in a day, I could supersize my value meal. If someone gave me a dollar for every street-bonded man who crossed my path in a day, well, I could stay at a Holiday Inn (and pay for a decent dinner.)
@MaMu, that kind of thing is actually very complex to observe, though. In my old neighborhood, I’d see mostly homeless women in the age range 30 – 60, plus a few men who were also on the older side of middle aged. That’s because it was a centrally located but very calm and quiet area, where nobody panhandled (which creates a lot of stressful turf wars) and us residents were unlikely to kick up a big fuss about people sitting on the stoops. It was the perfect place for these shy and retiring homeless women to hang out all day. Just 300 meters away, on the main shopping street, the visible homeless population was EASILY 95% male. If you never happened into our little microcosm, a quiet residential area only 1 block in size, you’d definitely get the impression you’re getting from your city. But you’d be missing something.
Oh and @dungone – one major issues shelters run into, is that many of them are “dry”. Alcohol is prohibited, and a lot of homeless people struggle with addiction, and thus aren’t willing / able to have to check into the shelter basically sober and stay sober all night. You could be seeing a lot of people out on the streets at night because a dry shelter wouldn’t work for them.
I also remember a older fellow telling me, when I was doing some interviews for a project, that a lot of shelters have issues with theft. He much preferred to stay outdoors even in the dead of winter, because he felt that at a shelter he could be robbed.
“I also remember a older fellow telling me, when I was doing some interviews for a project, that a lot of shelters have issues with theft. He much preferred to stay outdoors even in the dead of winter, because he felt that at a shelter he could be robbed.”
It’s dangerous being homeless. It’s a nutcracker – robbery in the shleters and lethal violence on the street. Homeless men are continually being killed here and there and the murders tend to be quite hard to solve.
@f, I think that if you go to New York City, you’ll find it very hard to find street-bound women in anywhere near the numbers of men. I realize that there are pockets of women as well and I have seen women who slept on the streets.
I think that rather than just a factor of being shy, it also helps if women have more places that they can go for the night and more help available to them. Even some DV shelters let homeless women use their beds. In some neighborhoods, you do have situations where the men you see panhandling will sleep on the streets whereas the women will have shelter. I think that also, not everyone goes to a shelter every night, but they might go once in a while when they feel the need to, and just having that option nearby makes a difference in where they choose to stay when they’re outside. So having more resources available, even if they are unused, allows women to move towards more peaceful neighborhoods. Also, while I have seen women who sleep in the streets, but I really have never seen women with children who did that. So when I hear that a larger percentage of homeless women have kids, it leads me to think that it makes them less likely to be out on the streets.
I’m transsexual and I’ve been homeless, in some way or another, both living as male and female. I’ve found a couple of other drastic differences between male and female homelessness.
1) Men can’t find good shelters. The only two options I had for shelter were a Salvation Army shelter, with strict rules that prevented me from working or a John 3:16 shelter that was more of a dice roll than anything. Women had many other shelters that weren’t available to me at the time, and most of them had flexible enough rules to allow them to get out, make something of themselves and move on with their lives.
2) There are more housing programs that will help men. I had an easier time getting housing because I was willing to talk about and treat my mental health issues, but there were many women’s shelters or women’s housing programs that weren’t available to me and which wouldn’t have required me to have mental health issues.
In the Southeast US, most shelters are run by churches and shelter men exclusively. Police will jail a homeless woman to get her shelter, but this further erodes her employment opportunities. Homeless women tend not to use encampments because of fear of violence, and sleep in vehicles, often purchasing gas instead of food. Campsites are only available if the state hasn’t suspended your driver’s license for letting insurance lapse. An unknown number of women use transactional sex to gain long-term shelter for themselves and their children. These factors make censuses of homeless women less accurate than comparable figures for men.
http://www.thereformedbuddhist.com/2012/01/no-seriously-what-about-truth.html
Just thought this would be a good continuation of this discussion.
BTW… I’m not Kyle Lovett.
Just wanted to say I read that article earlier, and I’m glad you linked it here Kyle. While the article can be a bit abrasive, I believe it makes some seriously salient points. I think the point about unsheltered homeless is the part that erked me the most when reading this article here, as TRB points out:
“The truth is that there is about a quarter of a million unsheltered homeless, who are literally sleeping on heating grates, park benches or underpasses, whose numbers get lost in those who have actual shelter. And the overwhelming majority of these unsheltered homeless are men. Depending on which study you believe, AHAR, HHS, Housing Coalition, US Mayors Study, etc etc, conservative estimates put the number at about 83% men, while other studies have calculated the percentage to be as high as 95%”
I haven’t got a chance to look closely at the many studies cited, and they are quite a few, I think most people who talk about the gendered nature of homelessness are usually referring to the unsheltered homeless. Hell, I’ve seen this borne out in my own town. We have a local skate park that has some underpasses that get frequented by homeless, and while I’ve seen many homeless there, I can literal count on one hand the number of homeless women I’ve seen there. Additionally, the buses that I travel on a fareless, and as a result, many homeless individuals get on the last buses that ride around town at night to make it to wherever they may go to sleep (which I take quite often as well since that is when I get of work), and again the same scenario appears – the homeless are overwhelmingly male.