Homeless Awareness Week: Women are often the ‘hidden’ homeless
Published: 9 October 2024
To mark Homeless Awareness Week 2024 the Council is highlighting the range of support services for anyone homeless or facing homelessness in Exeter.
Rough Sleeping Pathway Coordinator Harriet Earle-Brown looks at why women are often part of the ‘hidden’ homeless:
There are different ways of being homeless and different kinds of people experiencing homelessness that are often left out popular imagery, stereotypes, and stories in the media.
This can result in these experiences and these people becoming ‘hidden’, such as homeless women.
Sometimes we know women are homeless because they have approached their local authority and made a homeless application (we call this statutory homeless).
For various reasons, not everyone asks for help from the Council when they are homeless, and so their homelessness might be considered ‘hidden’ until an approach is made, or they are seen rough sleeping.
Rough sleeping is often understood as an issue predominantly experienced by men, making up 82 per cent of rough sleepers identified in the most recent annual snapshot (MHCLG, 2024). However, the government has stated:
“We recognise that sleeping patterns of females experiencing rough sleeping is more hidden and therefore may not be fully captured by the snapshot”.
There are different reasons as to why homeless women might be more hidden compared to their male counterparts.
Firstly, rough sleeping as a woman is very dangerous. Homeless women are more likely to experience violence, sexual assault, and abuse when sleeping rough and so if they cannot find someone safe to bed down with, they will sleep in hidden spaces where no one can find them.
Secondly, women are more likely to make use of informal networks like friends and family to find a place to stay until their homelessness is resolved.
However, this is not without its own challenges as it often requires personal belongings to be significantly downsized (either by storing or disposing of them) and living in someone’s else’s space can be unsettling and uncertain.
This does not always mean they avoid harm, with women continuing to face exploitation and violence in precarious living situations, such as sofa surfing.
According to Solace and the Single Homeless Project (SHP), this underestimation of the numbers of women experiencing homelessness can have implications on the types of services and support that are funded.
If women are under-represented in the data, it is likely they will be under-represented in the types of services and support that is put in place to help people experiencing homelessness. As a result, homeless services are sometimes criticised for focusing too much on the needs of men, and not catering for the needs of homeless women.
To address this issue in Exeter, the Council is taking part in the Rough Sleeping Women’s Census this autumn.
This week-long census involves working with different agencies around the city to capture the numbers of women rough sleeping or in unsafe living arrangements.
The purpose of this work is to develop better local and national data on women’s rough sleeping to inform strategic decisions on service design, funding, and wider understandings of homelessness.
For information on Homeless Awareness Week visit the Council’s website: exeter.gov.uk/homelessawareness/