Homeless Myths Debunked by Sussex Research

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Censuses taken in Brighton since 1991 testify that there can be up to 66 people sleeping rough on any one night in the town, often concentrated in small areas. These figures ensure that Brighton often ranks as having the highest number of homeless people per capita in the UK. Thanks to research by geographer Jon May, who's based in CCS, some of the myths which arise as a result have now been shattered.

Jon debunked widely-held assumptions about the lives of homeless people in Brighton with an exhaustive survey of their housing histories. "There has never been such an in-depth study of these processes before. This is the first time we've had a complete set of housing histories for homeless people," he says.

The flagstone of the research - entitled the Homeless Histories Project, and funded by CCS - was a unique data-collection system developed by Jon. He filled in a form for each night his respondents had been homeless, detailing the location - whether it was rough sleeping, a friend's floor or a hostel - and the length of stay. Some people filled in as few as three of these forms, some as many as 100. As Jon explains: "From these histories you can trace exactly when, how often and for how long someone has been homeless, how much they've moved around and where they've been moving to, and what sort of accommodation they have been staying in."

Most research into homelessness only concentrates on people's experience of living rough in the present. Because Jon May's research builds up a complete picture of people's past experiences, it gives an insight into what really happens over a period of time. Contrary to popular expectations, people who become homeless once, or even several times, do not become entangled in a spiral of long-term homelessness, drug addiction, alcoholism and crime.

Jon discovered that whilst around 16% of the sample were long-term homeless, by far the vast majority - around two-thirds of the sample - were 'episodically' homeless. These people had been homeless more than once, and often several times, in their lives, but they had also had periods of employment and secure housing in between, sometimes for many years. According to Jon, "Episodic homelessness doesn't seem to be developing into permanent homelessness. The two groups appear to be very distinct."

Drug use, alcoholism and mental health problems are also rare among the episodically homeless. Only 10% of the episodically homeless in the sample were alcoholics or drug users. According to Jon, the assumption that all homeless people have these social problems, and so are culprits in their own downfall, lets the real culprits off the hook. He argues that the real causes of homelessness are poverty and unemployment.