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.
I’ve seen hundreds and hundreds of homeless in my day, same as anyone who’s spent most of their life in or near big cities. Of those hundreds of homeless I’ve met or seen, less than ten have been female. As convenient as it is for this slanted pablum of a site to pretend 40% of homeless people are women, the only place you could hide this enormous proportion of invisible homeless women is in, well, homes.
Meaningful numbers require these distinction at least:-
Persons who are in improvised dwellings, tents or sleepers out .
Persons in supported accommodation for the homeless.
Persons staying temporarily with other households.
Persons staying in boarding houses.
Persons in other temporary lodging.
Persons living in ‘severely’ crowded dwellings.
Homeless statistics are some of the most manipulated and cherry picked numbers there are. Basically there are no reliable numbers, I consider a women housed in a hotel different from a man who lives under a bridge. If these numbers lump these together then they are of limited use. It is self evident to anyone the overwhelming number of truly homeless and destitute , which the term “Homeless” generally evokes, are men.
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… Read more »
BTW… I’m not Kyle Lovett.
http://www.thereformedbuddhist.com/2012/01/no-seriously-what-about-truth.html
Just thought this would be a good continuation of this discussion.
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.
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… Read more »
@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… Read more »
“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.
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… Read more »
@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.… Read more »
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… Read more »
@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… Read more »
“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… Read more »
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… Read more »
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… Read more »
Before I forget, homelessness in Germany for 2006 is 11% kids, 25% women, 64% men. (http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obdachlosigkeit)
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%… Read more »
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.
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… Read more »
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.
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…
@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… Read more »
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.