Homelessness Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Homelessness - Essay Example They also claim that there is ‘tertiary homelessness’, which refers to people living in boarding housing on a long term basis without security of tenure or exclusive use of bathroom or kitchen facilities. Smith (2005) also claims that many homeless people are ‘hidden’ from official government statistics, e.g. people sleeping on the couch in friends houses. However, Heintjes (2005) argues that defining ‘hidden homelessness’ as a form of homelessness stretches the concept to such an extent that it loses its distinct value, and he questions whether defining it in this way is a useful concept at all. Carlen (1996) states that changes in the law, economic conditions, and social and political ideology contribute to homelessness. Carlen (1996) also claims that homelessness and the homeless are 20th Century productions, in which governments attempt to categorize it in order to try and tackle the problem. From this point of view, Marxist geographers incl uding Harvey (2005) argue that homelessness can in some parts be contributed to the inequality that exists in capitalist societies, in which there will always be ‘winners’, i.e. the bourgeoisie, and losers, i.e. proletariat. This often leads in low wages and unemployment for the poorest members of society, i.e. the wheels are capitalism lead to poverty, and consequently homelessness. It is therefore the belief of Marxist geographers that as long as capitalism exists, so to will poverty, unemployment and homelessness. The Homeless Link Report (2011), a partner agency which worked with the UK Government’s ‘No One Left Out’ rough sleeping strategy aimed to investigate how many people slept rough on a single night in England. They instructed councils to submit estimates of the number of people sleeping rough on the streets of their area and found an increase by 42% from 1,247 in 2009 to 1,768 in 2010. London had the highest number of rough sleepers on an y average night with about 415. The report also found that a range of demographic factors have a significant effect on the probability someone will become homeless. It is the purpose of the remainder of this essay to explore and identify the socio-demographical factors that increase the likelihood of a person becoming homeless, and whether adequate policies can prevent increased and future homelessness. Quilgars and Anderson (1997) claim that young people are more likely to experience homelessness than any other age group and they found that young people aged 16-24 are considerably over-represented in homeless figures, accounting for 30% of homeless people. A range of social and economic structural factors are believed to have contributed to the rise in youth homelessness including changes to housing policy, the labour market and the benefit system. Evans (1996) also argues that young people may have little support and are unprepared for leaving home and are therefore at the greates t risk of becoming homeless. Increasing youth unemployment, combined with reduced access and supply of social housing have also significantly increased youth homelessness. Carlen (1996) also believes there is a link between youth homelessness and local authority care, in which she found 40% of young homeless people have at one time in their life been in care. This also suggests that homelessness could be the effect of a rough upbringing, with little family support or relations. Therefore when young people leave care at the age of 18, they have no