You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 30–40, which are based on Reading Passage 3.
Youth Homelessness
Youth homelessness did not emerge as a public problem in Britain until the second half of the 20th century. In 1975, a television programme called Johnny Go Home shocked the public by showing the risks faced by a runaway child in London, and placed the problem of youth homelessness firmly on the public agenda, although policy initiatives were not forthcoming. Behind the rise in homelessness among young people were the problems of youth unemployment, a reduction in state benefits, and a shortage of suitable housing.
Government responses to youth homelessness generally involve encouraging voluntary agencies to set up schemes. The proportions of young people affected vary from region to region, as do the underlying economic structures, making comparison difficult. However, homeless youngsters all over Britain face many of the same risks as they move between relatives, institutions and the street.
Statistics are an integral part of accounts of social issues, whether they be in the press or in the reports of agencies and academic commentators. The reaction of policy makers to a social problem also depends largely on the number of people it is thought to affect. However, there are very few agreed statistics on homelessness.
One reason for this is that there are a number of practical difficulties with measuring it. Young people who are staying temporarily with friends, for example, may not contact homelessness agencies, so their housing problem goes unrecorded. In addition, some may be homeless for just a night or two, others for months or years.
There is also no globally accepted definition of homelessness. For example, in Britain someone is deemed homeless by a local authority if they have no accommodation that they are entitled to occupy, but they must also fulfil a number of other criteria: they must have a local connection of some sort, they must not be intentionally homeless, and they must show that they are in ‘priority need’ of accommodation. Official statistics therefore exclude large numbers of homeless people.
Explanations of the causes of youth homelessness also vary considerably. Structural explanations account for youth homelessness by reference to societal structures, such as changes in the housing market. This is crucial since, by definition, homelessness is a housing issue. In particular, there has been a substantial decline in rented housing in recent years. The economic power of young people is also significant. Both unemployment and low pay are frequently viewed as being integral to homelessness and both factors affect young people in Britain. However, unemployment is not directly the issue – rather it is a question of the subsequent low income that unemployment incurs. As such, the state benefit system is also seen to be fundamental to the rise in youth homelessness, because young people’s benefits have been heavily restricted in a number of ways. As a result, many young people may be heavily in debt. These various difficulties have been further compounded by a number of demographic changes, such as the expanding number of single-person households. Consequently, while there has been a huge reduction in the supply of affordable accommodation, there has been an increase in the demand for such housing.
However, the problem of youth homelessness is often explained in more personal terms, which relate it to the individual behaviours of homeless people. A wide variety of such personal factors are often introduced to help explain youth homelessness, such as leaving home, mental illness, crime, and drug abuse, although there is usually disagreement over how these factors should be interpreted.
Four approaches can be taken towards the explanation of youth homelessness. One is the ‘political’ model, which sees homelessness as stemming primarily from the way society is organised. This is a view widely adopted in academic circles, but there are also a number of criticisms that can be made of it. Firstly, only by looking in detail at the individual features of the situation is it possible to assess the impact of these structural features on the homeless and to identify appropriate provision. In addition, this approach tends to treat young homeless people as powerless victims, which patronises them and ignores the fact that they are still capable of self-determination.
The ‘individual culpability’ model sees homelessness as having little or nothing to do with societal structures but as resulting from the individual behaviour of young homeless people themselves. Young homeless people, it is argued, do not have to leave home. As individuals in a free society they are accountable to themselves for their decisions. The advantage of this perspective is that it gives some credibility to the self-determination of young homeless people. However, because such an approach allocates blame to an individual, it also carries punitive implications.
In the ‘pathology’ model, the individual’s situation is perceived to be a consequence of personality disorders that may result from early childhood experiences. According to this model, young homeless people have specific problems and they therefore require specialist support. This approach can present a misleading picture of the young homeless – many of whom have no problems other than one of accommodation.
Finally, according to the ‘child’ model, young people become homeless because they are simply too immature to cope with life. However, there is evidence to suggest that many homeless youngsters show considerable resilience and maturity in learning to cope with and survive homelessness.