Alternative cartographies of homelessness: Rendering visible British women’s experiences of ‘visible’ homelessness

Jon May Department of Geography, Queen Mary, University of London, Mile End Road, London E1 4NS, phone +44 (0) 20-7882-5427, email [email protected]

Paul Cloke School of Geographical Sciences, University of Bristol, University Road, Bristol, BS8 1SS, phone +44-(0) 117-928-8301, email [email protected]

Sarah Johnsen Centre for Housing Policy, University of York, Heslington, York, Y010 5DD, phone +44 (0) 1904-321485, email [email protected]

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Abstract This article focuses on a group largely ignored by both geographers and feminist scholars of homelessness alike

– the growing number of ‘visibly homeless’ women in Britain.

Examining these women’s experiences the article sets out four ‘alternative cartographies’ of homelessness, moving around different experiences of the streets and associated institutional spaces and articulating different expressions of a gendered homeless identity. The article suggests we need to recognise that women too suffer the exclusions of visible homelessness, but also that the experience of visible homelessness is different for different women. Any attempt to respond to the (immediate) needs of such women necessitates a recognition rather than denial of these differences.

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Introduction In a recent review of Anglo-American geography, Bondi and Rose (2003) drew attention to two competing strands around which feminist urban scholarship has developed. These are identified as work concerned with issues of recognition and work concerned with questions of redistribution (2003: 232). Following a careful review of the field, Bondi and Rose conclude that whilst it is possible to find examples of scholars working across this analytic divide, feminist urban geography as a whole remains curiously bifurcated: more often focusing on the former rather than on the latter, or seeking to connect the two (Bondi and Rose, 2003: 239). Responding to the call for work that reaches across this divide, the current article seeks to connect a concern with the recognition of difference more directly to questions of social policy through a reading of women’s experiences of ‘visible’ homelessness and of the policy responses such experiences might best prompt.

As Bondi and Rose note, “During the 1990s one of the main foci of urban studies … [was] the development of critical perspectives on material and representational dimensions of urban public space and their implications for social identities and citizenship” (2003: 235). Within such work, particular attention has been paid to the difficulties faced by homeless people in carving out a space for themselves (both materially and figuratively) on the streets of a ‘revitalised’ central city. Yet with a few notable exceptions, the picture that emerges in these accounts is curiously androgynous or, more often, paints a picture of the struggle for urban space as one faced mainly if not wholly by homeless men (see, for example, Davis, 1992; Mitchell, 1997, 2003; Dunnier and Molotch, 1999; Smith, 1996; for exceptions; Ruddick, 1996; Rowe and Wolch, 1990).

In Britain especially, such a picture is reinforced by a more specialist homelessness literature. Noting that women are less likely than men to sleep rough or to engage in other activities (such as begging) that mark them as ‘visibly homeless’, feminist scholars have tended to focus their attention on the more extensive but largely hidden population of ‘single’ homeless

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women residing with friends and relatives, in bed and breakfast hotels or ‘upmarket’ hostels rather than in emergency shelters or on the streets (Smith, 1998, 1999; Takahashi et al, 2002; Watson, 1999; Watson and Austerberry, 1986)i. Whilst challenging unhelpfully restrictive understandings of ‘single homelessness’, one effect of such a move has again been to construct a picture of street homelessness as a quintessentially “male space … [in which] homeless women [appear] only … in a shadowy way, if at all” (Wardhaugh, 1999: 104).

In light of the growing number of women to be found sleeping rough on the streets of Britain’s towns and cities, or making use of the emergency shelters, day centres and other services provided for ‘visibly’ homeless people, such a picture is no longer tenable (Jones, 1999). Here we therefore seek to give voice to a group largely ignored by both geographers and British scholars of homelessness alike – ‘visibly’ homeless women. Rather than construct a singular picture of women’s experiences of ‘visible’ homelessness, however, the article charts a range of experiences. Such experiences move around quite different geographies, shaped by and giving shape to different and competing gender identities. In the conclusion we offer some thoughts on how these women’s experiences might help inform a more appropriate set of responses to the needs of other ‘visibly’ homeless women.

Understanding women’s homelessness “Homeless families and homeless men appear … in all large scale societies. Homeless women and children are relatively rare. Their appearance denotes widespread disorder and instability…” (International Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences, 1968: 494, quoted in Martin, 1987: 33) “Although homeless women … have existed since the beginning of recorded history, they have been politely ‘not seen’ … Consequently very little is known about their experiences…” (Martin, 1987: 33)

Constructions of homelessness move around a number of powerfully restrictive tropes. In the popular imagination homelessness tends to be reduced to the experience of ‘visible’ homelessness or ‘rooflessness’ (May, 2003). Thus constructed, it may in turn come to be understood as mainly restricted to the urban realm and largely, if not wholly, a male preserve 4

(Cloke et al, 2000; Higate, 2000a). Though women do appear in popular portrayals of street homelessness, their presence tends to be restricted to a limited number of roles: the vulnerable young girl preyed upon by older, homeless men, or the elderly ‘bag lady’ (Hutson and Liddiard, 1994; Kisor and Kendal-Wilson, 2002). In either case, their presence is easily obscured by that more troublesome population of rough sleepers, beggars and addicts that threaten the civility of a revitalised public space and whose lead players are, almost without exception, cast as men (see, for example, Daily Express, 1994a and b; Daily Star, 1993, 1994).

One of the main reasons that women’s homelessness has remained invisible for so long is the peculiar stigma attached to the ‘unaccommodated woman’ (Wardhaugh, 1999). As Sophie Watson has argued: “… homeless women’s bodies … represent a challenge to the feminine body … by sleeping on the street … [the unaccommodated woman] starkly disrup[ts] the public/private boundary … the private, and the sphere associated with feminine domesticity and sexuality [seeps] in to the public in a disruptive and threatening [way]” (Watson, 1999: 96-7). Historically, one response to the threat posed by the unaccommodated woman was to rename her. Hence, in the nineteenth century for example, mainstream accounts of women’s homelessness were inextricably bound up with the concern over prostitution. Marked as prostitutes rather than as ‘homeless’, peculiarly repressive responses to women’s homelessness were enacted even as the true scale of the ‘homelessness problem’ was underestimated (Golden, 1992). Alternatively, the problems of single homeless women went deliberately unacknowledged. One reason that the London County Council was reluctant to provide lodging houses for single women in the 1930s, for example, was that “giving them beds would have made them visible and belonging to society in a way that could not be tolerated” (Watson, 1999: 83). By the 1960s, the growing number of homeless women on the streets of Britain meant that their needs could no longer be ignored. But even then, women’s homelessness was still more likely than men’s to be viewed through a pathological lens: any

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woman who had ‘succumbed’ to (or ‘chosen’) a life on the streets being viewed as more dangerous and more disturbed than her male counterparts (Watson and Austerberry, 1986).

Such portrayals arise, in part, from a common misconception of the British welfare system. This, it is commonly assumed, intervenes to offer accommodation and support to homeless women before they reach the streets. In fact, British housing and homelessness policy has developed around a drive to protect the sanctity of the family rather than women, furnishing women without dependants or not otherwise in ‘priority need’ no more right to accommodation or assistance from the local state when homeless than is afforded single men or childless couples (Smith, 1999). As a result, women have always formed a significant, if largely unremarked, part of Britain’s ‘single homeless’ population: a group that remains almost entirely dependent upon the activities of not-for-profit organisations for the supply of emergency accommodation and support - night shelters and hostels, day centres and soup runs – when homeless (Cloke et al, forthcoming).

Yet, as Joan Smith has argued, rough sleeping especially presents particular difficulties for women, “not only because of the increased danger of sexual harassment and abuse, but also because of the importance of cleanliness … not only … the problems of remaining clean during menstruation, but also [because] remaining clean and respectably dressed is a method of self-protection” (1999: 121). As a result, women are in fact likely to deploy a number of tactics to avoid the streets, ranging from remaining in abusive relationships to embarking upon extended periods of ‘sofa surfing’ (Tomas and Dittmar, 1996). Single homeless women also often try to avoid the (heavily male dominated) spaces of institutional care that form the infrastructure of visible homelessness in contemporary Britain, turning instead to a range of other spaces in their search for shelter (Watson and Austerberry, 1986). Hence, Higate suggests that “attempts to understand …homelessness … might [usefully] be considered from the perspective of gender”, and concludes “in a heuristic sense, this could [best] be

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represented by men occupying a highly visible ‘rough sleeping’ position … [and] women … [as being] amongst the ‘hidden homeless’ population” (Higate, 2000a: 332).

In an attempt to give voice to the experiences of single homeless women, and shape public policy in such a way as to better incorporate their needs, British feminist scholars have therefore tended to turn away from the streets and emergency shelters to focus instead upon those other spaces of homelessness where women are more likely to be found: bed and breakfast hotels, ‘open’ and ‘up market’ hostels, or women’s refuges, for example (Smith, 1998, 1999; Watson, 1999; Watson and Austerberry, 1986). Such a move is clearly valuable, but not without its risks. Not least, though still in a minority, recent surveys of the single homeless population reveal a growing number of women sleeping rough. Of 15,000 recent applicants to housing and homeless agencies across Britain, for example, approximately a third of female applicants had slept rough at some point in the past and one in ten on the night prior to applying for aid (Smith, 1999). Women are also more likely than they once were to turn to Britain’s emergency shelter system: accounting for approximately one third of London’s ‘direct access’ hostel population in the mid 1990s, for example, up from one fifth in the mid 1970s (Drake, 1981; Harrison, 1996).

The rise in the number of visibly homeless women has not escaped the attention of service providers, who have responded to a changing clientele with an increase in the number of beds set aside specifically for women in mixed sex hostels and a growing number of women only emergency accommodation projects (May et al, forthcoming). The rising number of women sleeping rough, engaged in activities such as begging, or making use of night shelters and hostels, day centres and soup runs has also been noted in the mainstream homelessness literature. But, whilst this literature has increasingly acknowledged the presence of women amongst the visibly homeless population, it has rarely explored their experiences in any detail or sought to unpack the experiences of visible homelessness through an explicitly gendered perspective (see, for example, Carlen, 1996; Kennedy and Fitzpatrick, 2001; Neale, 2001).

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Bypassed by feminist scholars keen to extend discussions of single homelessness beyond the narrow confines of the street, and glossed over in mainstream accounts of visible homelessness, the experiences of visibly homeless women thus remain curiously invisible.

The homeless body A notable exception is provided by Julia Wardhaugh’s work on the gendering of the ‘homeless body’ (1999, 2000). It has become common place to argue that the body is the primary site of social experience (Featherstone et al, 1991; Shilling, 1993). But as Wardhaugh notes, “for the homeless, the body assumes increased, even paramount, importance. Lacking access to that second skin, the home, the homeless body becomes the first and often only line of defence against a dangerous world” (1999: 102). Charting the various ways in which homeless people respond to the lack of a normative sense of ‘home’, and the profound vulnerability associated with street homelessness, Wardhaugh suggests two possible and opposing responses: bodily contraction or expansion. Under the former, homeless people might seek to avoid the stigma associated with visible homelessness, and the risk of either physical attack or increased attention from the authorities, by moving beyond the public gaze: avoiding prime public space and carving out a place for themselves in the interstitial spaces of the city instead (Duncan, 1983). Likewise, in an effort to retain a sense of privacy and autonomy when lacking a space to call their own, people might retreat behind the barrier of their own skin – withdrawing into themselves and withholding personal information. In contrast, whether by the (fleeting) occupation of prime public spaces, or in their movements around the city, homeless people might seek to expand the spaces over which they can claim a sense of ‘ownership’ – thus extending the limits of the body (Higate, 2000a). These limits may in turn be vigorously defended by physical violence, as the ‘hard body’ seeks both to protect the only space it may call ‘home’ and extend its control over other bodies (Cooper, 2001).

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Crucially, for Wardhaugh at least, these responses are powerfully differentiated by gender. Hence she suggests that “[whilst] some homeless people, and men in particular, choose not to ‘disappear’ but to expand their unwelt to include a wide area of the cityscape … street homeless women typically disappear in to the shadows” of both the housed and homeless city (1999: 103). Thus, for Wardhaugh (1999, 2000), even when on the streets, homeless women live a shadowy existence on the edges of a male dominated ‘street scene’: rarely engaging in activities that mark them as publicly and visibly homeless (such as begging); melding in to the shadows of institutional spaces of homelessness (night shelters, hostels and day centres); moving in to the informal spaces of homelessness that punctuate the public spaces of the city only rarely and, even then, often only when accompanied by a man; and hiding themselves away from both the public and other homeless people if forced to sleep rough.

Re-sighting/re-siting women’s homelessness Though conceptually sophisticated, Wardhaugh’s account of women in the shadows of the homeless city provides a rather restricted picture of homeless women’s experiences and of their gender identities. In contrast to the contracted body presented by Wardhaugh (1999), for example, Sophie Watson points instead to the tendency of (some) street homeless women to deliberately challenge traditional gender roles by rejecting a clean, well groomed appearance and dressing instead in ways that deliberately heighten their visibility whilst saying ‘we are not like you’ (Watson, 1999: 97). Building on Watson’s insights, here we therefore present a more diverse picture of the geographies and identities articulated by visibly homeless women in Britain.

The article draws on material gathered as part of larger project examining the provision and use of emergency services for single homeless people in England, Wales and Scotland (outside of London). As part of that project the authors conducted approximately one hundred and forty in-depth interviews with project managers and staff, and a further ninety interviews with homeless service users, in a range of night shelters and hostels, day centres and soup

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kitchens in seven towns and cities across England. As part of their work with service users, the authors interviewed nineteen homeless women. Interviews were supplemented with periods of participant observation, with one of the authors working as a volunteer or ‘hanging out’ at a number of service spaces (total 16) in each of the case study areas. Finally, eleven homeless respondents (including three women) participated in an auto-photography exercise, using disposable cameras to produce a detailed record of their experiences on the streets (for further details of the methodologies deployed in this project see Cloke et al, 2004).

Given that respondents were recruited from a group which had already turned to the emergency service network rather than from a less visible but more extensive ‘hidden homeless’ population, it is not surprising that a higher proportion of the women interviewed here recounted experiences of hostel life or of time spent sleeping rough than has been found in studies drawing upon a wider sample (c.f. Smith, 1998). Yet it is still noticeable that amongst this group a very significant proportion (eleven of the nineteen women interviewed) recounted periods of rough sleeping. Indeed, almost as many of the women (58%) as men (63%) interviewed had slept rough at some point in the past. Notable too was that a small number of the women had slept rough on a continual basis for considerable periods of time – two and half years in the case of one respondent, with others reporting years spent moving between the streets and night shelters and hostels in towns and cities across Britain.

Of the nineteen women interviewed, the majority (fourteen) were under the age of twenty-five – with the oldest respondent fifty-one years of age, the youngest seventeen. All identified themselves as white English. At the time of interview, five were living in a mixed sex hostel, three in a women only emergency accommodation project, three with friends or relatives, two in bed and breakfast hotels, two on the streets, and four more (contacted through a day centre when homeless) in accommodation of their own. In line with previous studies, the majority of younger respondents had become homeless having left the parental home following serious family disputes, with two having grown up in Local Authority Children’s Homes or in the

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care of foster parents. A significant proportion (five) of the women had suffered domestic violence, with two others reporting being victims of violence from partners whilst on the streets. Five had had children taken into care by their local authority, either prior to or since becoming homeless, with one sharing her time on the streets with her adult son (c.f. Jones, 1999; Tomas and Dittmar, 1995).

In the remaining parts of the article, we attempt to make better sense of these women’s experiences by distinguishing between four main groups: those who distanced themselves from recognised spaces of homelessness and from a ‘homeless’ identity; those existing, as Wardhaugh (1999, 2000) suggests, in the shadows of a street homeless scene; those whose presence on the streets marked them as obviously and visibly ‘homeless’; and those who, though sharing the spaces of the homeless city with other visibly homeless people, were understood by neither the housed public nor homeless service providers as ‘homeless’ at all but marked with a quite different identity.

Such groupings, or ‘typologies’, are thematic rather than statistical. They emerged as part of a complex process of coding and interpretation. Two – those relating to women existing in the shadows of a street homelessness scene, and those more obviously marked as ‘visibly homeless’ – emerged as we brought the insights of the existing literature to bear on our transcripts. That is, working within a classic iterative process, it appeared to us that the accounts of some of our respondents showed a remarkable ‘fit’ with the conceptual frameworks used by Wardhaugh (1999) and Watson (1999). Other categories emerged as part of a more obviously deductive process: as we moved from our respondents’ transcripts to a higher level of abstraction – seeking new terms to capture the key elements of life stories that seemed to have no obvious parallels in existing accounts of women’s homelessness.

Importantly, though each group is relatively distinct, with individuals inhabiting one group or another, the groupings themselves should not be understood as existing along any kind of

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‘hierarchy’. Hence, we certainly do not wish to suggest that those who currently distance themselves from the street homeless scene are liable to ‘descend’ into street homelessness should they continue to be homeless: not least, because homeless episodes tend to be episodic rather than ‘progressive’ in nature (see May, 2000). For this reason, we have deliberately avoided presenting these typologies even as existing along some kind of ‘continuum’, preferring instead to conceptualise them as describing alternative ‘cartographies’ of homelessness – each articulating different expressions of gendered ‘homeless’ identities.

We turn to the notion of cartography because, as Bondi and Rose remind us, the “axes of identity … never operate aspatially but are bound up with the particular spaces and places within which, and in relation to which, people live” (2003: 232). Hence there is a double movement here. As these women move around the city, so their ‘homeless’ identities are shaped by their own, and other people’s responses to, the identifications that flow from a person’s presence in (different kinds of) ‘homeless space’. That is, it is as these women move around the city, in and out of different kinds of ‘homeless space’, becoming more or less visible as a ‘homeless person’, that prior codes of signification – ‘woman’, ‘homeless’ – come together and are (re)animated, constructing particular and situated identities shaped in part by questions of visibility. At the risk of further complicating this discussion of identity, the names of individuals and organisations have been changed to preserve their anonymity.

‘They’re not part of that culture…’ Like a number of the young women resident at Gateway women’s hostel in Bristol, Julie and Sharon (aged twenty and twenty three respectively) became homeless following a series of serious family disputes. After a period of moving from one friend’s floor to another, both ended up sleeping rough. Fearful of what might happen to them on the streets, they avoided the central city car parks and thoroughfares favoured by many of Bristol’s rough sleepers and hid themselves away instead on the outskirts of the city - seeking comfort, even though ‘homeless’, from the fact that they remained close to ‘home’ (c.f. Fitzpatrick, 2000):

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Julie: There were about three days [at Christmas] when I stayed at my parents house and then after that … I didn’t have nowhere else to stay and I was basically staying in old sheds and garages and things like that … in XXXX … I didn’t really want to be near the town because if anything did happen … all I had to do was run home … I felt safe [being] closer to home. Sharon: I [slept] in a doorway of a Jewish church - opposite where my sister lived. It was away from town and stuff so I felt quite safe there. (Julie and Sharon, Gateway, 9/4/2002)

Invisible to the street outreach teams responsible for making contact with people sleeping rough in the centre of the city, nor were Julie or Sharon comfortable approaching one of the numerous voluntary organisations providing accommodation and care for single homeless people across Bristol, the majority of which are located in the inner city area of St Paul’s. Their unease in approaching such places can be explained in part by their fear of the “desperate people” they assumed inhabit such places. But it also relates to the difficulty they had in seeing themselves as ‘homeless’: an identity denoting both a threat to their self esteem, and a subject of charitable care that they did not (yet) feel themselves deserving of (c.f. Rowe and Wolch, 1990). Julie:[In the end] I [went] to the XXXX [ a local day centre] and started asking them about places to stay … hostels and night shelters and stuff and they said that … things happened … at the night shelter. It’s alright [if] it’s a pair of you … If you don’t look scared then nobody is going to hurt you or anything, but … I get scared really easy so I didn’t want to go there ... Sharon: Yeah, it was just the thought of lots of desperate people going in there and they were going to do something … [And] I don’t know, it’s silly really … [But] I didn’t really class myself as a homeless person - even though I was … (Julie and Sharon, Gateway, 9/4/2002)

Eventually, Julie and Sharon were able to secure themselves a bed at Gateway. Opened in late 1995, the ethos and design of the hostel traces its lineage back to the group homes and open access hostels of the 1970s and 1980s that were inspired by the women’s aid movement. Though opening its doors to a wide range of women, including those with a long history of street homelessness and hostel use, a significant number of the women seeking refuge at

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Gateway have never been (visibly) homeless before. Many of these come to the hostel having finally left a situation of domestic violence. A crucial part of the hostel’s role is therefore to provide these women with a safe and secure space in which they can start to rebuild their lives. Part of this security rests in the location of the hostel some distance away from the inner city areas where the majority of the city’s homeless services are concentrated, as the manager explained: “We want everybody who comes into Gateway to feel safe - somebody who’s working in the sex industry and using crack cocaine to somebody who’s just walked out on a violent relationship … in a semi-detached in a respectable [part of] Bristol and [who] has never been homeless before … We take a lot of young women [for] whom this is their first experience of being homeless … women who have never been in this situation before … They’re not part of that culture that would use the day centre. They’re not part of the culture that would use any of those other services … for homeless people.”

(Manager, Gateway, 22/4/02) Since arriving at Gateway, Julie and Sharon had been engaged in a complex process of ‘identity work’ (Snow and Anderson, 1993). On the one hand, having spent time on the streets, both looked back with some distaste at their earlier attitudes towards ‘the homeless’. On the other hand, they had yet to fully take on the identity of ‘homeless person’ – an identity that remained wedded in their minds to the person sleeping rough, rather than staying in a place like Gateway: Sarah: What do you think the word homeless really means? Sharon: Before it meant like beggars and tramps, annoying people on the streets … I thought I was really cool about stuff like that, but … I looked down on them I guess and it was horrible. Julie: That’s what I did, I used to walk past them but now I don’t judge anybody. Sharon: Yes, because that could be us. (Julie and Sharon, Gateway, 9/4/2002, emphasis added)

A significant part of the attraction of Gateway for both women was therefore the (assumed) differences between it and a traditional ‘homeless hostel’. Whilst not intended to provide its residents with a space to call ‘home’ in the long term, Gateway was also not understood as ‘just another hostel’. Rather it seemed in fact to provide Julie and Sharon with something

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more productive than simply a safe place to sleep – offering a safe and secure space of transition from which they might in turn move forward to a place of their own. Crucially, for Julie and Sharon too, the ability of Gateway to provide such a space also rested with its location beyond the main centres of homelessness within the city and, having secured a bed at Gateway, they rarely returned to the city’s day centres or mixed with homeless people: Sarah: Most of the hostels and day centres are in town. Do you like being out here? Julie: Yes … I feel safer … I’ve heard about the other places and when somebody said ‘Gateway hostel’ I thought ‘oh no’. And then [when I got in here] I thought ‘this is brilliant’. Sharon: I assumed hostels were really horrible, scary and dingy dark places, but this is lovely …it doesn’t seem like a hostel [at all] (Julie and Sharon, Gateway, 9/4/2002)

Women in the shadows Whilst the tactics adopted by Julie and Sharon when sleeping rough made it difficult for service providers to acknowledge (and respond to) their housing needs, their ability to move towards independent living also seemed to lie with their ability to set themselves apart from a (visibly) ‘homeless’ identity; by distancing themselves from mainstream spaces of homelessness. But a significant proportion of the women interviewed recounted far less positive stories. Not least, a number had spent considerable periods of time sleeping rough. Often, and especially if alone, the need to avoid the threat of violence or sexual assault when sleeping outdoors had led these women too to seek out safer places on the margins of the city. For example, before finally getting a flat with a local Housing Association, Mandy had spent two and half years sleeping deep in the forest a few miles from the Bristol city centre. Others described time spent sleeping rough in the central areas of towns and cities, but hidden away from both the public and other homeless people in abandoned buildings and alleyways.

Even when on the streets for some time, then, these women often remained invisible to both members of the housed public and service providers alike. Indeed, it was only when rereading our field notes with an eye to Wardhaugh’s arguments (1999) that these women stepped out of the shadows and made their way into our own analytic frame. More often, our

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notes from periods of participant observation are notable for the way in which they quickly pass over what now appear as glaring absences. The following excerpt describing an evening spent volunteering on a Bristol soup run is a case in point: “First stop … XXXX. 6 guys [men] waiting … Next stop a bridge near XXXX. Only 2 men there – both regulars … served 10-12 guys [men] along the Watershed … then headed across to XXXX Street … up XXXX Street (just one bloke) … and down XXXX Street .. [where we] served a couple [man and woman] under a cash machine near the cathedral” (Participant Observation, Combined Churches Soup Run, Bristol, 3/3/02)

Though rarely using the soup kitchens that generate some of the most visible sights/sites of homelessness in the contemporary city, a number of these women did make use of day centres and drop-in services. Faced with the highly volatile atmosphere that pervades many day centres, however, they rarely stayed long (see also Johnsen et al, forthcoming). Otherwise, they hid themselves away in the corners – seeking protection from a mainly male clientele in anonymity and invisibility:

“Wandered in a few minutes after opening time … Things were pretty quiet upon arrival … but got much rowdier when the regulars arrived … Andy: “Hey Aussie bird - what you doing here?” … Still, I was glad to have them there as several of the guys I didn’t know … started hassling me. Spotted Carol (19) who, as usual, came in, ate and left again without saying a word to anyone. “ (Participant Observation, HALO Day Centre, Bristol, 5/3/02)

Nor were these women much better served by mainstream accommodation projects. Night shelters in particular tended to be avoided, with many reporting that they would rather sleep rough than risk a night in a mixed sex dormitory. Mixed sex hostels too offered little in the way of the more positive experiences described by Julie and Sharon (c.f. Jones, 1999). Rather, with the entranceways, foyers, and communal areas of hostels often dominated by men, many women effectively confined themselves to their own rooms – adding to already powerful feelings of isolation and depression.

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Confronted with a street hierarchy in which one’s position is primarily defined by the ability to physically defend one’s self, many of the women we talked to thus responded as Wardhaugh (1999) suggests: by retreating in to the shadows of a male dominated street scene and service infrastructure. Others sought instead the protection of a male companion. Whilst homeless people form friendships and enter into sexual relationships for the same (complex) reasons as do other people, the rigours of life on the street means that such relationships may also involve more complex dynamics (Rowe and Wolch, 1990). Not least, for homeless men, they may include an assessment of the greater earning potential enjoyed by women when on the streets. For homeless women, the assessment may relate to the need for physical protection, as the following conversation with a homeless couple illustrates:

Sarah: Tell me a little bit about when you were out begging, Abby. Abby: Well, there was a few of us out at the time and we all had our own, like, pitch sort of thing … [And] Because I was … the only lass I used to end up with more money … People feel sorry if they see a young girl on the streets, they feel sorry for ‘em, more than they do the lads. … Sarah: Was there much competition between the beggars? Abby: … Yeah, there was … jealousy, ‘cos I was raising more than others who were sitting out for longer ... I used to go out with this lad, Ian … and … if I had a good day I’d help him out, if he had a good day he’d help me out … [But] it just got to the stage where I was helping him a lot more than he was helping me out, so I ended up going out on me own. [Then] I got attacked [by another beggar] when he was supposed to be with me wann’it? Jason: Yeah. That’s smackheads for you … No loyalty … any of ‘em. (Abby and Jason, Scarborough, 20/4/02)

In contrast to a more general process of contraction that many of the women described, then, the same physical vulnerabilities that confined women to a subordinate position in the street hierarchy could also be used to engender greater public sympathy whilst begging. Though often remaining hidden when sleeping rough, and in the shadows of day centres or hostels, at carefully chosen moments women like Abby therefore displayed their homelessness in the most obvious and visible way. Yet for Abby and others like her the move towards greater visibility was a deeply ambiguous process. On the one hand, by engaging in an act that marked her as obviously and visibly ‘homeless’, Abby ran the risk not only of increasing her

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earnings but also of increased attention from the police (Dean, 1999). On the other hand, the ability to engage in such performances at all remained dependent upon male protection. Hence, even as it afforded her greater earning power than Jason or Ian (enabling her to assume a position of some power in these relationships), the very vulnerabilities that Abby presented to the public when begging were also visible to other homeless people: leaving her unable to defend her pitch and consigning her once again to the margins of the wider street scene.

‘Then I go through the Bear Pit – or over it … in the night time’ Though by far the most common, not all of the women we spoke to recounted experiences like Abby, Caroline and Carol, or fit easily within the more general process of contraction described by Wardhaugh (1999). For example, far from being at the edge, Theresa and Jules stood squarely at the centre of Bristol’s street homeless scene.

A long time member of one of the city’s most visible street drinking ‘schools’, Theresa, for example, held a powerful position in the group: frequently trusted to distribute the money that members of the school pooled each week from their benefits and earnings so as to ensure that funds were always available for drugs and alcohol (see Archard, 1979). Aged forty-six, Theresa was considerably older (and noticeably more frail) than most of the other men and women on the streets. Her position at the heart of the drinking school was thus less to do with her own physical prowess than her greater age and experience – experience that enabled her to advise others on how best to survive the rigours of the street, or left her with resources to share when others had run out of food, drugs or money: Sarah: Where do you think you fit amongst those groups? Theresa: I fit into all of them! Because I’m pretty well liked on the street … My street name is ‘Mum’ and everyone comes to me to ask advice, or to ask ‘have you got any food Theresa?’ Normally I do have things in my bag which I don’t mind giving to people. (Theresa, Bristol, 18 and 19/04/02)

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In fact, Theresa’s position in the drinking school also rested on the protection afforded her by her son. Widely acknowledged as the ‘hardest homeless man in Bristol’, Rich’s proclivity for violence afforded Theresa considerable freedom to move between different groups when on the streets, and a certain degree of safety (at least from other homeless people) when sleeping rough or begging.

In contrast, Jules’ position in the street hierarchy was a product of her own well deserved reputation for violence. Thus, if to some extent Theresa’s position was secured through reference to traditional feminine characteristics (most often, that of the matriarch), Jules’ rested more obviously on a denial of her (and other’s) femininity – as she promoted instead the values of the hard, ‘masculine’ body:

Things got a little tense when word got out that Chris had been up to her usual antics telling lies again. This time she’d claimed that the guy had raped her. Jules was loudly disapproving of Chris’s actions and offering to ‘sort her out’ …. Andy was trying to wind up Jules saying rumour had it that she ‘fought like a girl’. She was getting very agitated and was threatening to prove otherwise later. (Participant Observation, HALO Day Centre, Bristol, 5 and 6/3/02)

In contrast to Carol or Caroline, then, Theresa and Jules were highly prominent figures in Bristol’s day centres and drop-ins. Unlike Abby, whose homelessness was rendered publicly visible only at carefully chosen moments, their membership of well-known street drinking schools, physical appearance and tendency to sleep rough in the centre rather than at the margins of the city marked both out as publicly and visibly homeless in the most obvious ways. Indeed, and in contrast to the picture of homeless women’s limited territoriality painted by Higate (2000a), both Theresa and Jules moved easily between the various formal and informal spaces of homelessness that punctuate Bristol’s cityscape, including day centres and drop-ins, street corners and parks where homeless people gather.

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Significantly, when moving around the city Theresa also moved through a number of contrasting performances of femininity. When begging from members of the housed public, for example, it was clear that Theresa could no longer play the role of the ‘vulnerable young woman’ portrayed by Abby. Instead she therefore switched between a portrayal of the maternal characteristics which served her so well amongst the city’s homeless to the role of the flirtatious older woman, according to her audience:

“That little girl [referring to an entry in her photo diary] is Amy. She comes to the shop where I used to stand every night because I used to do jobs for them … She always comes up to me … saying ‘I want to see the lady. I want to see the lady’. Her Mum likes it because I keep Amy busy while she’s in the shop! … That [picture is of] a kebab van on the triangle. That’s Dave who works there. I’ve known him for a couple of years now. I buy kebabs there for £1.50. Normally they’re £3 … We have a standing joke me and Dave that Dave’s my boyfriend. They ask me to give him a kiss and I chase after him trying to kiss his cheek. (Theresa, Bristol 18 and 19/04/02)

Yet, away from the visibility of the begging encounter, another side of Theresa, and of the gendered homeless city, also emerges. On the basis of the protection afforded by her son’s reputation for violence, during the day time at least Theresa moved confidently through spaces of the city colonised by Bristol’s street homeless that for many of the city’s housed public (men and women alike) are ‘no-go’ areas. When at night those spaces are deserted by the homeless and appropriated by others, however, such a reputation counts for nothing. As a result, like other women, at night Theresa tended to move around rather than through such spaces – and, if confronted by the threat of male violence responded with a familiar set of techniques designed to diffuse the situation:

Then I go through the Bear Pit [a central city underpass and the main gathering point for homeless people during the day time]. Or over it. Usually over it in the night time. Sarah: Why is that? Theresa: For safety … It’s the lager louts that are a nuisance. They are the ones that say ridiculous, dirty, horrible things to you … You know, ‘I’ll give you a quid if you suck me cock. Ha ha ha…’. They

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think they are bloody hilarious! [laughs]. And so I say ‘oh my love, I’m ever so sorry, but I’m a vegetarian!’ (Theresa, Bristol 18 and 19/04/02)

Theresa and Jule’s accounts thus confound any easy or singular reading of the city’s streets as either a space of liberation and easy movement or oppression and closure for women (c.f. Wilson, 2001). Rather, as they make their way around the city, Theresa and Jules both draw upon and call into being radically different performances of homelessness and femininity at different times of the day and night. Amongst Bristol’s homeless community, Theresa’s position as street ‘matriarch’ (underpinned by the protection afforded by her son) and Jule’s role as ‘enforcer’ open up the marginal spaces of the city colonised by Bristol’s street homeless usually closed not only to members of the housed public but other homeless women. At other times, the complex variety of roles adopted by Theresa help dissipate some of the hostility often directed towards the visibly homeless and beggars by members of the British public, and open up a number of the prime city spaces more usually closed to homeless people. Yet such performances are not always enough. When at night the city’s marginal spaces are deserted by the homeless and colonised by others, Theresa and Jules are confronted by the same threat – the threat of male violence - that inhibits the movements of many women, housed and homeless alike.

I guess you could call it ‘controlled’ temporary accommodation Having restricted our sample frame to those using emergency services for the ‘homeless’, the experiences of a final group of women can only be recounted here through the voices of others. The Helping Hand project in Bristol provides advice and support to women engaged in street prostitution. Since it opened its doors in 1995, it has worked with over four hundred women, seeing on average about forty women a night - the majority in their teens or early twenties. Outlining the backgrounds of its clients, its manager described a familiar picture of young women with histories marked by institutional care, and sexual and physical abuse in the family ‘home’ (Phoenix, 2000). The majority of clients had a crack cocaine or heroin

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habit, with most turning to street prostitution as a way of funding first their own, and later, their pimp’s, addiction (c.f. Potterat et al, 1998; Williamson and Follaron, 2003).

In the eyes of the project’s manager at least, a significant proportion of her clients were also homeless:

Paul: So do you see homelessness as being part of what you’re dealing with? Susan: Very much so. I [would say] … probably about forty/forty-five percent of the women we have contact with are homeless Paul:

So how do [those] … women cope?

Susan: They stay with the punters. Or the pimp. You know, until they don’t bring enough money in, and then they get kicked out. Which I guess would be called ‘controlled’ temporary accommodation. And quite a lot of them just sleep in a doorway. (Manager, Helping Hand, 26/4/02)

In fact, numerous other respondents talked of sharing the car parks and squats, abandoned buildings and alleyways that make up the spaces of the homeless city with prostitutes. Whilst sometimes visible to other homeless people, however, these women’s homelessness was rarely visible to the housed public or homeless service providers. Not least, whilst a small number of the women interviewed at hostels and day centres intimated that they had been involved in street prostitution (an experience that none wanted to talk about on tape), it seems that the majority of those engaged in street prostitution are unlikely to turn to mainstream homeless services:

Sarah:

Do many of the women you work with use the services for homeless people?

Susan: Not many of them … they don’t want to go in [places] where they’re going to … see punters … plus [these services] are [only] open when they’re out of it, recovering from a night working or they’ve taken their gear, so they [just] don’t get to them. I think if there were [more places open in the] evening, they probably would access them more, especially in winter. (Manager, Helping Hand, 26/4/02)

Nor did the needs of these women emerge in any publicly visible way via the few services catering specifically for them. Rather, though Bristol has yet to experience the highly vocal

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public demonstrations against street prostitution that have emerged in other British cities in recent years (Hubbard, 1998), community opposition means that such organisations have to keep a low profile: Sarah: Is there much public awareness of what you do here, or do you deliberately try and keep it as unobtrusive as possible? Susan: With the people that need it, there is – with the women, we’re very well known, and the pimps know us, and the police know us … But [with the community] it’s a very dodgy line, because – like I said - we want community support, but until we educate the community the community will kick us out … So, no generally if you ask Joe Bloggs in the street, they won’t have ever heard of us … but in a way that protects us … because forty women walk in the door every day, and they’ve got to walk back out again. I don’t particularly want ‘there goes an old slapper’, I don’t want them to have to face that. (Manager, Helping Hand, 26/4/02)

As Brewis and Linstead (2000) have argued, street prostitutes live in the shadow of violence and rape to a greater extent than almost any other group, even as the courts continue to treat the rape of a prostitute differently to the rape of a ‘chaste’ woman. For prostitute women with a serious drug addiction, the risk of violence and assault is magnified, as their ability to adjudge the danger of the situations in which they must put themselves if they are to earn is impaired (Williamson and Follaron, 2003). For homeless prostitutes, such dangers are exaggerated still further. Without a place of their own, such women have few opportunities to escape the dangers of the streets. Yet, whilst projects like Helping Hand that are geared to meet the needs of street prostitutes rarely offer accommodation, very few hostels for the ‘homeless’ knowingly admit women engaged in prostitution (St Mungo’s, 2004).

With no space of their own to return to at the end of the working ‘day’, such women are of course denied the opportunity to easily construct the boundaries that would seem to enable other women engaged in prostitution to delineate between their professional and other selves (Hubbard, 1998). But marked as different by other homeless people too (some of whom might be their clients), such women are also denied the opportunity to carve out a space for themselves, and a sense of belonging, amongst those with whom they share the streets - as the

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stigma associated with the ‘unaccommodated woman’ is compounded by the stigma attached to the ‘working girl’.

Conclusions Though we have no way of knowing whether the experiences of this final group are replicated in other towns and cities across Britain, it seems likely that the politics of identity and visibility being played out on the streets of Bristol are being enacted elsewhere. In a recent survey of street homeless youth in the United States, for example, Greene et al (1999) found 25% of the young people interviewed to have engaged in some form of ‘survival sex’ whilst on the streets. In Bristol alone, more homeless women are currently using the services provided by Helping Hand than are to be found in the formal spaces of visible homelessness across the city – in night shelters and hostels, day centres and soup kitchens. Yet, just as in the closing decades of the nineteenth century, the needs of homeless women engaged in street prostitution go unacknowledged: as they are identified by members of the housed public and homeless services providers alike as ‘prostitutes’ rather than as ‘homeless’ (Golden, 1992).

Before we can begin to respond to the needs of such women we must first acknowledge their existence. To engage in questions of redistribution necessitates a prior acknowledgement of difference. Yet, though providing an especially powerful example of such a process, the homeless women engaged in street prostitution encountered above articulate only one of the ways in which the experiences of ‘visibly’ homeless women are currently rendered invisible thus leaving their needs unmet. Not least, whilst feminist scholars of homelessness continue to train their attention on spaces beyond the street, and mainstream scholars of street homelessness continue to ignore its gendered dimensions, researchers are unlikely to be able to shape the direction of social policy in ways better able to meet the needs of the growing number of single homeless women on Britain’s streets.

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As Pat Carlen (1996) reminds us, the naming of a social problem is central to the responses that follow, and all such naming strategies work to exclude and to restrict. In seeking to identify a redistributive social policy agenda, then, it is essential not only to recognise that women too suffer the exclusions of visible homelessness, but that the experience of street homelessness is different for different women. Responding to these women’s (immediate) needs is by no means an easy or straightforward task. One place to start might be with the recognition that the most effective response is likely to be one that works with rather than denies the very different identities articulated by different homeless women.

For women like Julie and Sharon, for example, the need was for a space set apart from the main sites of homelessness and from an obvious ‘homeless’ identity in which they could work on rebuilding a sense of themselves and plan for their future. But the kind of environment provided by Gateway would hardly be appropriate for Theresa or Jules - whose sense of identity and self esteem were intimately bound up with their position in Bristol’s street homeless scene. Rather than seeking to break these connections with the street entirely, their needs might be better met by the new generation of ‘wet shelters’ that provide supported accommodation in which people may continue to drink whilst living with other members of their drinking school (see, for example, May 1997).

Given the level of community opposition that often accompanies an application to develop new services for homeless people, finding an appropriate location for wet shelters especially is liable to be difficult. But if the development of new services will not be easy, it is clear that the current form of emergency service provision for single homeless people in Britain is often far from appropriate for women. Certainly, whilst Britain’s street outreach and assessment teams continue to train their attention on the central areas of cities, they are unlikely to reach many women sleeping rough. Rather, the women interviewed here tended to make contact with accommodation providers through word of mouth, or via day centres or drop-in services. Yet for many, day centres especially represented a space of fear rather than care. Indeed, the

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markedly volatile atmosphere to be found in both day centres and hostels led many women to avoid them altogether, or else to try and blend in to the shadows - where their needs were unlikely to be identified by over-worked staff who often had little choice but to respond to the needs of the most volatile, or violent, first (Johnsen et al, forthcoming). Where the only other option open to them was to stay in a traditional dormitory style night shelter, the majority of women preferred to sleep rough.

Such dynamics may be attributed in part to the particular form of ‘hard masculinity’ around which Britain’s street homeless scene has always moved (Higate, 2000b). But if so, these dynamics have also clearly been heightened by the violence associated with the drug use that is increasingly a part of street homelessness in Britain (Neale, 2001). Over and over again, day centre and hostel managers reported a significant rise in the proportion of clients with a heroin addiction, and countless homeless respondents commented on the increasing violence associated with drug use both in hostels and on the streets (May et al, forthcoming). Whatever the particular ‘source’ of such violence, however, it is clear that these dynamics have a powerfully gendered effect: leaving many women fearful of turning to emergency services, or providing sometimes deeply unsettling experiences when they do.

In light of the more secure atmosphere to be found in places like Gateway, the most obvious responses to these shortcomings in the emergency service network might seem to be to increase the number of women only emergency accommodation projects. But by no means all the women interviewed here expressed a desire for single sex accommodation, and couples especially often found it difficult to find a place to stay. Given that many towns and cities across the UK have only one emergency hostel or night shelter, it seems unlikely that people will have a choice over which kind of project they access in the near future.

The most effective response to these shortcomings would therefore seem to be to improve conditions in current provision so as to render day centres and hostels more supportive, less

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threatening places for both men and women. Having begun this article with the desire to give voice to the particular experiences of visibly homeless women, then, the best – or at least most realistic - response to the immediate needs of such women might lie in seeking to improve the accommodation and care available to single homeless women and men alike.

Acknowledgements The authors would like to thank the homeless women and men and project staff whose experiences we have tried to give voice to here, and the referees of our final research report whose perceptive and supportive comments encouraged us to try and think through the dynamic of women’s homelessness in more detail. The research on which this article is based was funded by the ESRC (Award R000238996).

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SMITH, JOAN (1999) Gender and homelessness, in: HUTSON, SUSAN & CLAPHAM, DAVID (Eds) Homelessness: Public policies and private troubles, pp. 108-132 (London, Cassell). SMITH, NEIL (1996) The New Urban Frontier: Gentrification and the revanchist city (New York, Routledge). SNOW, DAVID & ANDERSON, LEON (1993) Down on Their Luck: A study of homeless street people (Berkeley, University of California Press). ST MUNGO’S (2004) Working with Sex Workers and Crack Addiction: a Lambeth success story (London, St Mungo’s). TAKAHASHI, LOIS, MCELROY, JAMIE & ROWE, STACEY (2002) The socio-spatial stigmatization of homeless women with children, Urban Geography 23, pp. 3102-22. TOMAS, ANABELL, DITTMAR, HELGA (1995) The experience of homeless women: An exploration of housing histories and the meaning of home, Housing Studies 10, pp. 493-517. WARDHAUGH, JULIA (1999) The unaccomodated woman: Home, homelessness and identity, The Sociological Review 47, pp. 91-109. WARDHAUGH, JULIA (2000) Sub City: Young people, homelessness and crime (London, Ashgate). WATSON, SUSAN. (1999) Home is where the heart is: Engendering notions of homelessness, in: KENNETT, PATRICIA & MARSH, ALEX (Eds) Homelessness: Exploring the new terrain, pp. 81-100 (Bristol, Policy Press). WATSON, SUSAN & AUSTERBERRY, HELEN (1986) Housing and Homelessness: A feminist perspective (London, Routledge and Kegan Paul). WILLIAMSON, CELIA & FOLARON, GAIL (2003) Understanding the experiences of street level prostitutes, Qualitative Social Work 2, pp. 271-87. WILSON, ELIZABETH (2001) The invisible flaneur (revised edition), in: WILSON, ELIZABETH The Contradictions of Culture: Cities, culture, women, pp. 72-89 (London, Sage). Notes i

In Britain, distinctions are commonly drawn between the ‘statutory’ and ‘non-statutory’ homeless, a division first made in relation to the 1977 Housing (Homeless Persons) Act and upheld in all subsequent revisions to the Act. The former group includes all those to whom the local state has a statutory duty to provide accommodation and applies to people with dependants, those found otherwise in ‘priority need’ (by virtue of age or ill-health, for example) and those deemed not to have made themselves ‘intentionally homeless’. In contrast, the non-statutory homeless have no such rights to accommodation and are mainly dependent upon voluntary organisations for emergency services. Because the majority (though by no means all) of the non-statutory homeless are single, it has become commonplace in policy and practitioner discourse to refer to this group as ‘single’ homeless people. The single homeless can subsequently be divided in to two further groups: those suffering ‘visible’ homelessness (living in night shelters, hostels or on the streets) and those experiencing some kind of ‘hidden homelessness’ (staying unwillingly with friends or relatives, in bed and breakfast hotels or in squats).

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