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http://www.24dash.com/news/housing/2010-12-23-One-fifth-of-homeless-women-turn-to-prostitution-study
UK - STUDY - ONE FIFTH OF
HOMELESS WOMEN
HAD TURNED TO PROSTITUTION FOR
SURVIVAL
Published by Jon Land
23 December 2010
Nearly one in five homeless women has
resorted to prostitution to escape a night on the streets, a study revealed
today.
The survey commissioned by homeless charity Crisis found individuals were
resorting to crime and unwanted sexual relationships to avoid sleeping rough.
The Hidden Homelessness report undertaken by
It revealed more than one in four (28%) of women and 14% of men had spent one
or more nights with an unwanted sexual partner to accommodate themselves.
The study of 437 single homeless people across the
Approximately 20% said they had avoided bail or committed an imprisonable
offence as a means to resolve their housing problems, while 18% admitted
spending time in accident and emergency departments for the same reason.
Crisis chief executive Leslie Morphy said: "One of the reasons why the
research is so damning is that it focuses on those people who don't have any
right to social housing or supportive housing.
She added: "There are three things that are particularly shocking. The
percentage of people who said they had ended up in an unwanted sexual relationship
simply because they needed a roof over their head.
"Even more shocking is the 19% of women who said they had resorted to
prostitution to get a roof over their head.
"That was followed by people who had made the decision to commit petty
crimes in order to end up in custody or who use accident and emergency
facilities to avoid ending up rough sleeping.
"Sleeping on the streets is in itself extremely dangerous and cold. People
are clearly doing the things we'd talked to people about and anecdotally knew
they did."
The study
found financial hardship was leading to homelessness, with 13% evicted for rent
arrears or being unable to afford their rent and 9% losing accommodation tied
to employment.
Ms Morphy warned homelessness was likely to worsen as the full effects of the
economic downturn are felt.
She said: "Unfortunately I don't think we've reached the crisis point in
2010, I think it's going to get worse, not better.
"Of course the weather is ghastly and that clearly makes it much more
dangerous for people when the conditions are this bad.
"What we haven't seen yet are the results of some of the cuts coming
forward.
"In particular, we haven't seen the results of the housing benefit cuts
that have been announced. We also haven't really seen the results of the cuts
in local authority budgets."
She added: "We are particularly worried about people who are normally
single homeless people, where the local authority doesn't have any statutory
duty to house them. They are regarded as not being in priority need so they
pull through all of the safety nets."
Ms Morphy urged the Government to re-think its plans to avoid hitting
vulnerable people.
She said: "There are two things we want them to do. We want them not to
bring in all these housing benefit measures, particularly the one about the
shared room rate.
"We want them not to take forward a measure which means people who are on
job seekers allowance have their housing benefit reduced by 10% when they've
been on it a year and we really would urge local authorities not to cut
homeless services over the next few years because that is going to be the only
lifeline for people.
"We'd urge government to make sure that safety net is tightened so that
single people don't have to resort to this sort of desperation."
Ms Morphy said this year's freezing winter was also hitting homeless people
particularly hard.
She said: "We are worried about the fatal impact because it's true. Some
people will die and in fact there was a death from hypothermia in
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Contact Information re: Hidden Homelessness Research Project: http://www.shu.ac.uk/research/cresr/sp_stephen_green.html