The Plight of a Homeless Woman

Introduction

The United States has the largest number of homeless women in the developed world, and the main cause of this is the excessive rates of domestic violence. Women of all ages are forced from their homes and onto the streets to seek relative safety from physical and sexual abuse. However, the plight of a homeless women is only moderately improved by their fleeing, as there are not enough shelters, temporary placement, or women’s shelters to provide for the at risk population. While this is the result of the matrix of macroeconomics in American capitalism, it is also the fractured result of the dark side of Patriarchy. American women are suffering violence, double standards, and injustice all while raising children, while others are just children themselves fleeing abusive family members. The house is crumbling.

Why Women Become Homeless

It is a travesty, and a poor reflection on the priorities of American governance and culture that the U.S. has the largest number of homeless women in all the industrialized nations. Rates of homelessness continue to rise as the rates of affordable housing do not rise, and “Each year, more than three million people experience homelessness, including 1.3 million children” (Colorado Coalition for the Homeless). Homeless mothers with children represent the largest population of homeless, and the overwhelming majority of the time they have become homeless due to fleeing domestic violence. While the immediate cause of homelessness is often violence, nearly 100 percent of homeless women report experiencing domestic or sexual violence during their lives, and it simply reached a point where they had to flee. 

It goes without saying that most homeless women are already low income, and living right on the fringes of social support. Although these women are often terrified of being homeless with children, they often do not perceive they have a choice, as more than 36 percent of homeless women said their partner threatened to kill them, compared to 31 percent of housed women. Almost 27 percent of homeless women and 19.5 percent of poor, housed women needed or received medical treatment because of physical violence. Compounding the challenges faced by low-income women in violent relationships are rules that govern public housing. Through a “one strike” policy, women may be evicted for a violent activity regardless of the cause or circumstances. (Colorado Coalition for the Homeless)

Many women living in poverty on the fringes have exhausted their family support structure by the time they are forced to leave their homes, and all too often family sides with the abuser, pressuring women to stay in abusive relationships for corrupted reasons. This blaming the victim paradigm is all too common, and leave many women with no one to turn to for help for themselves and their children. The aggressors get to stay in the house after forcing the women out, and “There has never been a single year on record when women living in poverty did not outnumber their male counterparts” (Colorado Coalition for the Homeless). There are many contributing factors to why women are so often on the short end of the stick, and forced into homelessness. 

One reason is wage inequality coupled with the need to take care of children. For low income women, often the wage they would receive for the job they could get would barely cover the cost of childcare, and so many women are forced to stay home with their children without the means to adequately provide for them. Abusive partners complicate this in many ways besides violence and the threat of violence, such as refusing to work themselves, or having addiction issues, and refusing to help raise the children. This is an intolerable situation in which a mother is made a virtual prisoner and slave in her home (National Alliance to End Homelessness). If she is able to find a decent job she runs the risk of jealousy with her abusive partner which would complicate matters. All of this creates a terrible storm of pressure in which fleeing to the streets seems the best option (Colorado Coalition for the Homeless). 

The Plight of the Homeless Woman

Homeless women experience all the same struggles as they did as low income individuals, but they are largely magnified by their life on the streets. One element of homeless life correlates and affects all the others, and that is physical health. Life on the streets is physically taxing (being so often on the move and exposed to the elements), stressful (many threats of insecurity), dangerous, and guarantees poor nutrition, which exacerbates all health issues. Many women become homeless with health issues, and these quickly become exaggerated on the streets. As a result,

Some health problems that disproportionately affect homeless women in comparison to the general population include skin disorders, lacerations, fractures, respiratory ailments, and chronic conditions such as hypertension, diabetes, asthma, anemia and ulcers. Over one-third have a chronic, physical health condition. (Colorado Coalition for the Homeless)

Complicating the pressing realities of physical health is the issue of mental health in homeless women. Mental illness tends to grow when under stress, with no healthy routine, or sense of security. In this case, about 50 percent of homeless women have experienced a major depressive episode since becoming homeless. Compared to housed women, homeless women have three times the rate of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (36 percent) and twice the rate of drug and alcohol dependencies (41 percent). (Colorado Coalition for the Homeless)

Mental illness makes homeless women more vulnerable on the streets, and this is one reason the rate of death for this demographic is ten times the regular rate for housed women. Infectious diseases, “in conjunction with severe poverty and often inadequate access to health care, lead to high mortality rates among homeless people” (Cheung and Hwang 1243). As a result of this difficult reality the life expectancy at age 25 is 52 years, which is seven years lower than the general population (Colorado Coalition for the Homeless).

The Plight of Young Homeless Women

Under the rates of homeless mothers fleeing violence, the second largest demographic of homeless women are runaway youths also fleeing sexual and physical violence in their homes. This is a tragic demographic, in that these girls try to stay away from shelters and government aid for fear they will be sent back to the abusive situation, or put into foster care (which they perceive as another abusive situation (Ensign and Panke). As a result many young girls result to “Survival sex”, which is “the selling of sex to meet subsistence needs. It includes the exchange of sex for shelter, food, drugs, or money. The dangers inherent in survival sex make it among the most damaging repercussions of homelessness among youths” (Greene, Enett, and Ringwalt 1406). The dangers from this practice are infectious disease, unwanted pregnancies, and death. 

Since this demographic is hard to get ahold of, it is not well known how pervasive survival sex is, and it most likely affects both genders. Research has assessed, “Previous estimates of the proportion of runaway and homeless youths who engage in survival sex range from 10% to 50%.1-16. These estimates, however, were based on relatively small and geographically limited samples” (Greene, Enett, and Ringwalt 1406). Survival sex is a symptom of PTSD from sexual and physical abuse from within the family, as research has found a very strong correlation between the two. Psychologically, once a youth has been violated in this way they often come to see themselves as damaged, and rather than find creative solutions to their needs often fall back on this repeated trauma. This is all the more reason why it is essential to punish abusers and protect their victims. 

However, all too often victims are ignored, and the abusers go unpunished. Thus, the U.S. rates of homeless women reflect a permissive attitude towards abusing women and children. Also, it must be mentioned that in the unlimited expansion capitalism model which America’s economy runs on, economists insist on an unemployment rate of at least 3% to keep wages low and the fright of job loss keeping workers in line. This creates cycles of poverty which a consistent percentage of the population will always fall into because the system is designed this way. When the government refuses to allocate funds to social services for this population, or create low income affordable housing, or enough shelters you get people dying and selling themselves on the street (Stoner 578).

There are and there have been many strong moves to advocate for justice in this area:

• Family Violence Prevention and Services Act (FVPSA)

• Violence Against Women Act (VAWA)

• Paycheck Fairness Act

• Workforce Investment Act (WIA)

• U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD)

• Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA)

• U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness Federal Strategic Plan to Prevent and End Homelessness.  (Colorado Coalition for the Homeless)

However, so far none of these measures have even come close to addressing wage stagnation, inflation, and the many ways the poor are systematically marginalized in the name of progress. Looming over all of this injustice and violence is the dark specter of Patriarchy, which is a major feature of American culture. Patriarchy advocates that women are inherently of less value and worth than men, and this delusion is behind the permissive nature of abuse which enables it to be so widespread, and the victim blaming which adds bitter salt to women’s wounds (Murphy). 

Conclusion

The plight of a homeless woman in America is dangerous and depressing if she has no friends or family to turn to. All of the threats and challenges to her life have not been addressed in this short review (such as veterans, and the peril of shelters, etc.), and the focus was on the primary fault-the abusers who stay at home. It is a long held maxim that you can tell the character of a nation by how their weakest and most vulnerable are treated. In this light America does not fare well, evidencing a warped survival of the fittest skewed to the white money male scale with the necessary cannon fodder to litter the streets above which the lucky inherited few choose to gaze upon.

Works Cited

Cheung, Angela M., and Stephen W. Hwang. “Risk of death among homeless women: a cohort study and review of the literature.” Canadian Medical Association Journal 170.8 (2004): 1243-1247. Retrieved from: http://www.urbancentre.utoronto.ca/pdfs/elibrary/CMJ_Risk-of-Death-Homeless-.pdf

Colorado Coalition for the Homeless. “Policy Brief: The Characteristics of Homeless Women.” Coloradocoalition.org, 2016. Retrieved from: http://www.coloradocoalition.org/!userfiles/TheCharacteristicsofHomelessWomen_lores3.pdf

Ensign, Josephine, and Aileen Panke. “Barriers and bridges to care: Voices of homeless female adolescent youth in Seattle, Washington, USA.” Journal of advanced nursing 37.2 (2002): 166-172. Retrieved fro: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11851784

Greene, Jody M., Susan T. Ennett, and Christopher L. Ringwalt. “Prevalence and correlates of survival sex among runaway and homeless youth.” American journal of public health 89.9 (1999): 1406-1409. Retrieved from: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1508758/pdf/amjph00009-0102.pdf

Murphy, Alexia. “Why homeless services are failing women.” The Guardian, 7 Mar. 2014. Retrieved from: https://www.theguardian.com/housing-network/2014/mar/07/homeless-services-failing-women-st-mungos

National Alliance to End Homelessness. “Domestic Violence.” Endhomelessness.org, 2016. Retrieved from: http://www.endhomelessness.org/pages/domestic_violence

Stoner, Madeleine R. “The Plight of Homeless Women.” Social Service Revie. Vol. 57, No. 4 (Dec., 1983), pp. 565-581. Retrieved from: https://www.jstor.org/stable/30011683?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents