Abstract
Families are the fastest growing segment of homeless populations in resource-rich countries; most are female-headed. We report on women’s experiences of being homeless with their children in Victoria, Australia, emphasising their mental health. Twelve women (who between them had daily responsibility for 31 children) were interviewed, revealing complex pathways into homelessness; the two main contributors were economic decline and domestic violence, with drug use and poor mental health making lesser contributions. Homelessness appeared to have adverse effects on women’s wellbeing, mental health and ontological security. There was evidence of structural barriers to good mental health being inherent in the system designed to support them, with no provision for prevention or early intervention, and limited capacity for providing residential stability. Women wanted to live somewhere that was stable, secure and safe, for themselves and their children.
In western societies that have provided increasingly secure and comfortable lives for their citizens, there remain disparities in access to health care, education, housing and financial security. Among people marginalised by inequality are women who are homeless with their children. This article reports on the experiences of some of these women in Victoria, Australia, with an emphasis on their mental health. The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) General Social Survey 2010 found that people who had experienced homelessness in the previous 10 years were socially disadvantaged in many ways in comparison with people who had not experienced homelessness, including greater likelihood of having a disability or chronic health problem and being a victim of violence in the preceding 12 months (ABS, 2012b).
Despite the higher proportion of men among the homeless in resource-rich countries (Chamberlain and MacKenzie, 2009; US Department of Housing and Urban Development, 2010), the majority of families experiencing homelessness in these countries comprise women and their children. For example, almost 80% of families in shelter accommodation in the US are ‘female-headed’ (US Department of Housing and Urban Development, 2010). In Australia, from January to March 2012, about 30% of all those seeking help from specialist homelessness services presented in families, most of which comprised a single adult, usually female, with children (Australian Institute of Health and Welfare [AIHW], 2012). The most common reason given for seeking assistance with housing was domestic and family violence, accounting for almost a quarter of applicants (AIHW, 2012).
It is difficult to make comparisons among countries because of differing definitions of homelessness, disparate data collection and the undercounting of the ‘hidden homeless’. In this article, we adopt the cultural definition of homelessness (Chamberlain and MacKenzie, 1992) on which the ABS based its statistical definition which was applied to the enumeration of homelessness in the 2010 census (ABS, 2012a). This definition has its foundation in the concept of ‘home’ as representing a sense of security, stability, privacy, safety and the ability to control one’s living space (ABS, 2012a). Homelessness in developed countries tends to be iterative, with people identified as homeless experiencing unstable, frequently changing accommodation rather than consistent ‘rooflessness’ (Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute [AHURI], 2004; Rosenthal and Rotheram-Borus, 2005).
Another source of difficulty in making inter-country comparisons – indeed, in thinking about homelessness at all – arises from the diverse methodological and epistemological differences identified in approaches to homelessness (Fitzpatrick and Christian, 2006). Internationally, homelessness for women and their children has been found to be caused both by individual factors, including mental illness and relationship breakdown, and by structural factors, such as a shortage of affordable housing and poverty (AIHW, 2011; Department of Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs, 2008; Meadows-Oliver, 2003; Styron et al., 2000). The two countries that dominate research on homelessness are the US and Britain; it has been argued that the US tends to emphasise individual explanations for homelessness whereas Britain tends to emphasise structural explanations (Fitzpatrick and Christian, 2006). These differences can be understood as posing either a ‘housing problem’ (requiring structural intervention for more housing) or a ‘social problem’ (requiring individual social support for the homeless) (Fitzpatrick and Christian, 2006), each inviting a different response or solution. However, complex interaction appears to have been acknowledged given that Fitzpatrick and Christian (Fitzpatrick and Christian, 2006) identified increasing emphasis in Britain on individual social support (especially for children homeless with their parents) and in the US on the increased provision of housing. Australia’s social system owes more to Britain than to the US, especially in its universal healthcare, although there is official recognition of the interaction between individual and structural factors in the causes of homelessness (Department of Health and Ageing, 2005).
One significant problem identified among the homeless population is mental illness. Although a definitive prevalence is debated, there is evidence that mental health problems are higher among the homeless population (male and female) than among the non-homeless population (Department of Health and Ageing, 2005; Johnson and Chamberlain, 2011; Teesson et al., 2003). A systematic review and meta-analysis of surveys in the US, UK, Australia and mainland Europe that included estimates of the prevalence of mental illness in the homeless population (predominantly male) found that homeless people are more likely to have alcohol and drug dependence, major psychotic illness and depression than the general population (matched for age) in their countries (Fazel et al., 2008). Among those who sought specialist help with housing in Australia from January to March 2012, about half were identified as having a current problem with mental health (AIHW, 2012). It is evident that mental illness can precipitate homelessness (Mental Health Council of Australia, 2009).
However, the causal direction may be reversed: unstable or unsatisfactory housing can have adverse consequences for mental health (Mental Health Council of Australia, 2009). A review of international literature suggested that the experience of homelessness may initiate mental ill-health, especially depression and anxiety (Department of Health and Ageing, 2005). It has been argued that homelessness can cause mental ill-health (particularly anxiety and depression) as often as mental illness causes homelessness (Johnson and Chamberlain, 2011), although the data on which this argument was based have been disputed as an under-estimate of mental health problems in the homeless population (Flatau et al., 2010). Research in Melbourne found that over half (53%) of the 30% of homeless people in the sample who reported a mental illness had developed these problems after becoming homeless (Chamberlain et al., 2007).
It is evident that mental illness and homelessness interact in complex, iterative ways; the lives of homeless people with a mental illness have been found to be repeatedly affected by traumatic experiences such as intimate partner violence, physical and sexual assault, relationship breakdown, and the deaths of people significant to them (C. Robinson, 2003; E. Robinson et al., 2008). These distressing experiences can be gendered. For example, an Australian survey of and interviews with homeless people with a diagnosed mental illness found that more women (48%) than men (11%) had left accommodation because of physical or sexual assault, and that violence and abuse had been constant features of their lives, perpetrated by partners, landlords, family members and strangers (AHURI, 2004). There is some evidence that a minority of women report improved mental health or wellbeing while homeless because they have escaped greater trauma experienced in their previous residence (Styron et al., 2000; Tischler et al., 2007; Tomas and Dittmar, 1995).
Good mental health may depend on a secure home (Mental Health Council of Australia, 2009), but home is more than a roof and four walls. A distinction has long been made between the objective, material aspect of housing and the ontological security that comes with a subjective sense of being home (Giddens, 1990; Rykwert, 1991; Shaw, 2004; Tomas and Dittmar, 1995). The concepts of ‘home’ and ‘ontological security’ have subjective meaning in the context of those who experience them and are thus subject to continuing definitional discussion (e.g. Hiscock et al., 2001; Mallett, 2004; Padgett, 2007; Shaw, 2004). Giddens’ influential definition of ontological security centres on confidence in the continuity of one’s self-identity, which is dependent on a sense of the reliability of people and things; that is, that relationships, the material environment and possessions are stable, trustworthy and secure. Homeless women lack security in potentially every aspect of their lives. If they are homeless with responsibility for the daily care of children, they commonly report loneliness, uncertainty, powerlessness, loss and feelings of failure (Hulse and Kolar, 2009; Meadows-Oliver, 2003; Tischler, 2008), and carry the additional burden of feeling that their parenting is being scrutinised and judged to be inadequate (Cosgrove and Flynn, 2005; Hulse and Kolar, 2009).
It was our goal in this article to contribute to the evidence about women who are homeless with their children. The women whose experiences are reported here were primarily interviewed to provide background information about their children’s experiences of homelessness. However, what they revealed about their own lives could neither be accommodated within the child-focused research report (Kirkman et al., 2010) nor ignored. A dedicated analysis was necessary. The aim of this component of the research, then, was to learn from women themselves about the experience of being homeless with their children.
Method
Approval to conduct the research was obtained from the University of Melbourne Human Research Ethics Committee. A reference group consisting of key stakeholders in homelessness research, service provision and advocacy was appointed to oversee the project. All research participants gave informed consent.
It was our goal to gain insight into what it meant to women to be homeless with their children; to understand the phenomenon from the perspective of those who were experiencing it. Qualitative research methods were chosen as appropriate to this epistemological position (Liamputtong, 2009).
To fulfil the goal of the larger project, we recruited 20 children aged 5–12 years, currently supported or accommodated (with at least one other family member) by youth or family homelessness services but not, for ethical reasons, living in crisis accommodation. Services working with people experiencing homelessness assisted with recruitment; case workers liaised with volunteer parents and the researcher to arrange interviews. Each parent who gave permission for a child to participate was invited to be interviewed, but parental participation was not a prerequisite for a child’s participation. Parents (and their children) were interviewed at the services from which they were recruited or at their homes with a case worker present. Parents were interviewed about their own and their children’s experiences of homelessness and unstable housing, using a semi-structured question guide. They also completed a questionnaire (developed for the research) giving demographic information about their family, including housing history and the number of schools attended by children. Families were compensated by a payment of $50 for their time. Data were gathered between December 2008 and June 2009.
Questionnaire data were summarised. All interviews were audio recorded and transcribed. Pseudonyms were allocated to each participant and identifying details removed from the transcripts or disguised. Transcripts were analysed thematically. Thematic analysis is an efficient and flexible means by which social researchers can organise complex qualitative data and to try to find connections among the accounts of experience given by individual people. There was no assumption that there would be any ‘essence’ of the experience of homelessness, hence no search for ‘saturation’. Our purpose was to identify patterns or themes in the context of epistemological or ontological positions (see Braun and Clarke, 2006). We systematically read each transcript, noting any themes arising and organising them into a conceptual hierarchy or pattern. We re-read each transcript to ensure that the thematic scheme was appropriate and comprehensive. Our thematic analysis was informed by Bruner’s (1986) theory of the narrative mode of thought and the meaning-making in which individuals engage as they try to understand their place in the world.
Results
Twelve parents or guardians (11 mothers, 1 grandmother) agreed to be interviewed; they had responsibility for 16 of the 20 participating children. Questionnaires were completed by all but two of the women; these two provided most of the missing information in interviews. Only one woman was not born in Australia; she came from the UK. Most women identified as Anglo-Australian, two identified as Greek-Australian, one as Aboriginal and one as English. Between them, the women had 38 children (including one grandchild), of whom 31 were living with the women. Most women were living in transitional supported accommodation and had been there for less than a year. During their children’s lives women had experienced between 3 and 11 changes of residence, which had included hotels or motels, other varieties of emergency accommodation, refuges, sleeping rough or in cars, rooming or boarding houses, caravan parks, and the homes of friends. Only one woman was living with a partner (her husband). Government benefits and allowances were the major source of income for almost all women completing the questionnaire. Most women reported limited sources of social support (such as from parents, siblings, or ex-partners) with the majority relying primarily on a social worker.
Themes identified were Pathways into homelessness, Homelessness and mental health, Women want stability, security, and safety, Effects of shame and the perceived public discourse of homeless women, and Self-help and citizenship.
Pathways into homelessness
The women’s pathways into homelessness with their children were complex. In most cases, several factors could be discerned. The two main contributors were economic decline and domestic violence, which often went hand in hand. Problems with drug use and mental health constituted a third, minor, contributor.
Economic decline
Most of the women (7 out of 12) described experiencing stable housing before economic decline precipitated them into homelessness. The end of a relationship was most commonly reported as the initiator of their financial difficulties. Rebecca, for example, had been a tenant then bought her own home before marriage. Her divorce after two children put her back on the rental market with no assets. When rental costs rose dramatically and her landlord decided to develop the property, he refused to renew Rebecca’s lease. As a single parent, Rebecca found it impossible to find somewhere affordable to rent in the private market. Kylie, Raelene and Leanne also lost their assets and income when a relationship ended. According to Stefania, her husband incurred gambling debts to ‘thugs’; they were unable to pay the mortgage on their house, which they lost to the bank. Stefania, her husband, and their four children had been reliant on homelessness services for four years, unable to recover from their complicated financial debts. Jane, like Rebecca, became homeless when her rental property was scheduled to be renovated and sold. With what she described as a good rental history, Jane was puzzled about why landlords would not accept her and her three children as tenants. Molly, unlike most of the other women, said that she could afford current rental costs but, when her landlord, too, wanted to develop the property in which she was housed, she found it impossible to find a house on the private rental market as a single mother with five children. Despite what she also described as a good rental history, Molly remained reliant on homelessness services and said she was saving to buy a house.
Escape from family violence into poverty and homelessness
A similar majority of women (7 out of 12) reported experiencing violence which had contributed to their homelessness. Danielle, for example, said that she had been in a series of four violent relationships over 16 years. Her most recent relationship ended after she was raped by her husband’s best friend and her husband forced her to leave home with her children; she had no assets or income of her own. Brenda left home to escape ‘emotional and controlling’ domestic violence. Her husband restricted her contact with family and friends and forced her to account for every cent she spent, including on food. Brenda escaped with her children on the school bus; she sought help from the local police who directed her to a women’s shelter. Layla, Kylie and Leanne also became homeless after violent intimate-partner relationships. Doris said that she had moved from a country area because of violence perpetrated by her intimate partner and other family members; there were indications of a long history of unstable housing in Doris’s extended family. Sarah revealed multiple problems including a violent ex-husband who continued to terrorise her family with firearms. However, according to Sarah, the precipitator of homelessness was her addiction to marijuana which led to a drug-induced psychosis.
Drug addiction and mental illness
Sarah was the only woman who reported pre-existing problems with drugs and mental illness. Some women had experienced these problems in other people: Danielle described her sister as a drug addict and Leanne gave the same description of her daughter; women talked about being put in emergency accommodation with people affected by drug addiction and mental illness, and how disturbing and frightening this was to them and to their children. Nevertheless, for these women except Sarah, poor mental health was a consequence of homelessness rather than a precipitator of it.
Homelessness and mental health
Consistent with previous research (e.g. Department of Health and Ageing, 2005), the insecurity and instability of homelessness appeared to have adverse effects on the wellbeing of parents and their children. There was also evidence of structural barriers to good mental health inherent in the system designed to support them.
Instability and insecurity
Suddenly becoming homeless with their children was a shock to the women. When Rebecca found herself ‘out on the street’ she felt that ‘We were on our own. Just literally on our own.’ Jane recalled feeling completely helpless: ‘I was lost. I had no clue what to do.’ Molly said she ‘absolutely panicked’. The sense of fear, anxiety, bewilderment and despair is evident in Kylie’s experience. She was escaping from ‘domestic violence’ with her 6-year-old son who was in a wheelchair after breaking his leg. She sought help from a charitable organisation. We went [to the first motel], then we went to another motel, then it was from just shared accommodation, shared accommodation. And I’d ring and make phone calls trying to get somewhere. And even the crisis centre, they just didn’t know what to do with me, half of the time, and they’d put me into a motel for the night … [which had no disability access] and I had to carry him, the wheelchair, my bags. It was just awful, really awful. And then I remember going around to [a] crisis centre, just packed with all my belongings, and everything falling off of the wheelchair, feeling like I was just going to break down because we had no money so we were just walking around, walking around. And then we’d have to come back three hours later and ask if anything had been sorted, could we get in anywhere.
After the initial shock, as time passed, the effects of chronic insecurity emerged. Layla found the instability ‘hard, very hard’ and wept during the interview, saying, ‘I’m just sick of moving.’ Jane said that moving around with her three children ‘has been horrible … not knowing, every day, what it was going to be like, so I couldn’t plan for them for next year’s school, and, or nothing. So everything was just up in the air.’ Brenda found that unstable housing affected her family functioning: ‘You sort of can’t work out permanent boundaries because, when you move places, boundaries change.’ Similarly, Danielle was concerned about the effect of two years’ unstable housing on her four children: ‘They don’t have a routine any more. They have always had a routine.’ Even when they were in temporary housing and no longer searching for each night’s bed, women were poised for flight. Jane kept separate piles of clothes for herself and her three children in their kitchen so that they would be ready to leave at short notice.
Homelessness can have a detrimental effect on mood and the ability to manage the demands of daily life. Layla and her child were lonely and isolated; Layla reported that ‘There was a time where I just couldn’t handle it and [my daughter] did go and stay with my sister for about three months, because I just needed to sort things out.’ Although most women went to extraordinary lengths to minimise effects on their children, at times they were unable to cope. For example, Molly recalled telephoning a social worker and saying, ‘Take my kids or I’m going to kill them.’ It was a few days before Christmas; she was alone with her five children in an unfamiliar suburb and her car broke down. Molly continued to be grateful that the social worker had arranged to send the children to a holiday camp.
Women described deteriorating physical health and associated mental health problems in themselves and their children, which they attributed to the stresses and hardships of temporary or inadequate housing. Rebecca said: In the four years or so that we were homeless, I got very sick.… So the kids had a lot to deal with, not just homelessness, because it affected my health a lot more, which they grew up a lot quicker, which was very sad.… Being homeless, the kids have a lot more responsibility.
Rebecca identified her children as profoundly affected by unstable housing: ‘They were never happy, never smiling.’ Some women described themselves and their children as ‘depressed’ (Jane, Sarah, Danielle, Stefania). Stefania and her husband had lost their sense of trust, becoming nervous and suspicious. She nominated her greatest need as ‘Emotional support’.
Rebecca’s account revealed the extraordinary effort she made to minimise the effects of homelessness on her two daughters, including spending the night in her car in the street while her daughters slept at friends’ homes and driving an hour to school each way to ensure that they stayed at the same school. Rebecca tried to maintain as much as she could of ‘normal’ life for her children, despite her own problems and low mood. I tried to get them to as many birthday parties as possible … back to any school events that were on.… Tried, even though I didn’t feel like it, to take them to the park, which was hard … to actually get the energy to put a smile on to go to a park and play with them.
Other women also drove long distances to familiar schools, relinquished their own further education, and described the harmful effects on their mental health of anxiety about their circumstances and concern over the disruption to their own and their children’s lives.
One woman seemed different from the others. Doris was the only person who gave the impression of having been transitory all her life, saying ‘I was moved around a lot as a kid.’ She acknowledged that her children found the constant moving to be unsettling, but commented, ‘I don’t see a problem.’ It seemed that Doris’s own history of unstable housing had formed her worldview, which contrasted with the worldview of those women for whom homelessness was unexpected. Doris’s account represented instability as much less problematic than the other women’s accounts.
Structural barriers to good mental health
It is regrettable that the system established to support people experiencing homelessness and insecure housing appeared to the women to exacerbate and even initiate poor mental health. As far as these women were concerned, there was no evident prevention or even early intervention built in to the system. Jane, for example, was given eight weeks’ notice of eviction when her landlord wanted to develop the property. When she could find no affordable rent, she spoke to a social worker, ‘and she told me that the only way anyone’s going to take any notice of you is when you are literally homeless’. Similarly, Rebecca said that no service would help her: until I was in crisis. And while I had a couch to sleep on, they didn’t put you in crisis.… Basically we had to wait ’til we were on the street, which it ends up that’s when I got very ill, just through stress, they said, and migraines. I had a stroke.
Women tended to think that they would have had a better chance of obtaining scarce public housing had they been mentally ill or substance-addicted. As Jane said: It’s much easier for a man who is drug dependent and alcohol dependent to get into public housing, whether it be a single unit, than it is for a family to get even any recognition.… To be a homeless family, or a homeless single mum, or a homeless single dad, it’s not good enough for the system.
However, Sarah, who had been mentally ill, did not find it easier to get housing. Being a sole parent with children was a problem mentioned by all unpartnered women as a barrier to housing in the private sector and not a sufficient reason for support in the public sector. Sarah reported service workers telling her that ‘there was people out there worse off than me. And I said, “Well, my ex-partner is shooting at my house. Mine and my kids’ lives are in danger.”’ Despite her concerns, Sarah said she was told she would have to wait three years for public housing and resorted to private rental, naming her mother on the lease (with her mother’s permission) to help her persuade the landlord. According to Sarah, landlords ‘just will not let a single parent rent a house. It’s just, most of the time, even families; they only want singles or couples or something like that for a four-bedroom house.… It makes it hard.’
The system designed to support people without permanent homes was also accused of contributing to instability, insecurity and poor mental health by ensuring that they cannot put down roots. Temporary housing is allocated on 90-day leases, with a notice to vacate presented at the start of tenancy. Although the policy is not always strictly enforced, women felt anxious from the outset; glad to have a roof and a bed for a short time, but worried about where they would go next and what effects the constant moving was having on their children. Furthermore, as families moved from one temporary accommodation to the next, they lost touch with their extended family and other sources of support. It was evident from the questionnaire responses that women had limited support and depended largely on a service worker. Layla said, ‘It’s been hard … because we’ve moved from where we know everyone to where we know no-one.’
To make matters worse, when women were given emergency housing, they and their children were housed among people displaying florid symptoms of mental illness and drug addiction, in what women perceived as dangerous locations. This further shook women’s sense of security. For example, Raelene kept her family ‘just in our room with the door shut’ to escape ‘druggies’; Sarah ‘had quite a few weirdos’ who terrorised her and stole her food; and, at night time, Rebecca ‘locked all doors and windows’ but could not escape the sounds of ‘yelling and screaming’. In the rooming house where Kylie and her son had a room: All the kids there wouldn’t leave the room alone; they’d be banging on the door. The girls would be fighting, drug addicts. This drug addict girl threatened to prick me with a syringe. You know, just these people that had problems that were beyond – . There was somebody there who had lost her mind completely. She was going around saying, talking to herself, and shouting at me every time, sort of, me and him did anything. So we couldn’t even come out of our room to go to the toilet. You felt like, ‘What do you do?’ You know? It was just a horrible experience.
Having to share accommodation with people expressing the effects of severe drug problems and mental illness was, according to the women, damaging to their own and their children’s mental health. Kylie became conscious of the many pathways to homelessness and the contrast between the needs of a suburban mother and child and those of people experiencing severe problems with mental health and substance abuse: I realise that there isn’t a lot of places to send people, and that, I think, is the problem. And they’re all being sent – . And the fights, and the craziness there was just very confronting. And finally realising how long people had been homeless for, the different situations of homelessness.
Women want stability, security, and safety
Women articulated their need for stability and to provide a safe and secure home for their children. Raelene, for example, said that being ‘safe’ was her most important goal. Danielle’s ‘main priority’ was ‘just to have a stable environment for the kids’. Leanne ‘needed my grandson to feel secure’ and ‘wanted to be in somewhere that was ours, and that we were safe to walk around’. Layla was in tears when she arrived for the interview and said it was because she had been talking with the social worker about her desire to find a permanent home. I’m just sick of moving. I just want to be in one place where I’m happy.… It’s just not safe where we are.… I want to settle one day and be happy. And not have to worry about anybody else.
The beneficial effects of a stable home were evident in the improved mental health of those who had found one. Jane and her children had been in the one house for more than a year and reported that the stability had contributed to their wellbeing. Brenda had been given longer-term accommodation and found it better than constantly moving, even though she was ‘still trying to get the permanent stability’. However, the neighbourhood was a quiet one in which she was ‘starting to feel safer’. Kylie said that her current transitional housing was of a better standard than the rooming houses in which she has been living recently: Even though it’s only a temporary thing, the feeling of just having that safe place, it’s like you’ve won the lottery almost. It’s just like everything’s better now, or going to get better, you know? You don’t feel just so exposed and out there, like you did before.
The most notable example is Rebecca; she and her children had recently moved in to their own home, built with 500 hours of her labour in collaboration with the international charity Habitat for Humanity. She made it clear that her life and her daughters’ lives had been transformed, and said that she finally had time to ‘build our relationship back together’; to mend the damage caused by the stress of homelessness.
Effects of shame and the perceived public discourse of homeless women
Most women expressed shame about not having their own homes. Rebecca was deeply affected by her experience: ‘I’ve always had a lot of pride in myself and the homes I’ve kept, so to be homeless sort of knocked my self-esteem right out.’ She thought her daughters ‘lost a lot of respect for me when we were homeless.… They thought I let them down: … “Why can’t you do it, Mum, when every other mum could do it?”’ (Her daughters described, instead, the fun they had with their mother and the effort she took to make them happy.) Raelene was ashamed of being homeless and hoped no-one she knew would find out, which restricted the care she could obtain for herself and her children. She spoke of ‘worry that the neighbours would – the neighbours know that this is a transitional house and, you know, I get judged because of it’. According to her social worker, Raelene was reticent about taking up opportunities if they represented being homeless, such as grants available, through the school, to support people using homelessness services.
Women’s sense of shame arose from their expectations of themselves as responsible adults and also from what they perceived as the public discourse of the homeless person. Rebecca said that her children had been called names for being homeless, and Layla had been the victim of similar treatment. Leanne both suffered from and positioned herself within the discourse of the undesirable homeless person. She did not want her grandson playing with children from public housing nor ‘having those type of kids and mothers around him’. At the same time, Leanne was upset that mothers in the more middle-class suburb in which she was then living did not want their children to play with her grandson. Jane believed that ‘You have to be an alcoholic, drug dependent, mentally unstable, physically abused, or you abuse your children, or you’re a refugee’ before you can receive housing assistance. This belief reflects the adverse public discourse of homeless women.
Self-help and citizenship
Despite the hardships confronting them, most women displayed extraordinary tenacity in trying to maintain vestiges of independence and a sense of themselves as contributing members of society, although this was extremely difficult. They did their best to help themselves by improving their education (Molly, Brenda, Stefania), were active in looking for a home and, in light of the challenges to their mental health and wellbeing, could take heroic steps to protect their children. Some women also clung to a sense of contributing to society as useful citizens. Rebecca volunteered at the charity Habitat for Humanity because she wanted to do something of value; only afterwards was she given an opportunity to work on a Habitat house of her own. Layla was caring for an adolescent girl in her temporary accommodation because the young woman’s mother, who was mentally ill, had forced her out of home. These women, in parlous situations themselves, may assume responsibility for others in worse situations, and described being taken in by friends whose own housing was precarious.
Conclusion
Our use of qualitative methods has enabled us to understand something of the experience of homelessness from the perspective of 12 women homeless with their children in Victoria, Australia. Their sense of wellbeing, their mental health, and their ontological security appeared to have been adversely affected by their experience of homelessness. In particular, women felt unable to plan, to make their children’s lives safe and secure, and to feel stable. They exhibited signs of extreme stress and anxiety. Most of the women expressed embarrassment and shame about their circumstances, especially their inability to provide appropriately for their children, both tangibly and intangibly. Homelessness came as a new and shocking experience to the majority of women, who were likely to have experienced economic decline as a pathway to homelessness, with domestic violence a major contributing factor. Drug use and mental ill-health appeared to have contributed to homelessness in only one case. Our results, while derived from a small sample, are consistent with research conducted elsewhere (for example, AIHW, 2011; Cosgrove and Flynn, 2005; Hulse and Kolar, 2009; Meadows-Oliver, 2003; Styron et al., 2000; Tischler, 2008; Walters and East, 2001). Women wanted to live somewhere that was stable, secure and safe, for themselves and their children; those who had achieved this goal described a consequent improvement in their sense of wellbeing and security.
These Australian findings support the growing demand internationally for minimising the harmful effects on mental health of homelessness by providing secure housing as the first priority. The US ‘Housing First’ model, also known as ‘rapid re-housing’, identifies housing as a human right and is designed to replace the model experienced by these women in which they are moved through stages of emergency and temporary housing (e.g. National Alliance to End Homelessness, 2004). The women we interviewed felt marginalised both by their homelessness and by the system which, they thought, deemed them insufficiently damaged to receive the long-term housing assistance they required. For their mental health to improve, these women needed a housing response that provided the security, stability and safety they required for themselves and the children in their care.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
The researchers thank all the research participants, who were generous with their time and in sharing their thoughts and experiences; the staff of service organisations who, while giving priority to the needs of their clients, assisted in recruitment for the research; and members of the research reference group who guided the research.
Funding
The research was commissioned and funded by the Salvation Army Melbourne Central Division Research and Advocacy Fund, in partnership with the Council to Homeless Persons, Melbourne Citymission, and the Family Access Network.