Reading the 70 page
Rough Living: Surviving Violence and Homelessness [
PDF] by Catherine Robinson, UTS, which -
reveals the ways in which intense chains of disadvantage incorporating homelessness are triggered by very early experiences of violence. Drawing on biographic interviews with 6 men and 6 women, the project bears witness not only to horrendous repeated experiences of physical and sexual violence but discusses what may be understood as related multi-dimensional vulnerability in areas such as physical and mental health, education, employment and social connectedness. A picture of the long-term cycles of violent victimisation and homelessness and their compounding traumatising effects are made clear and the importance of trauma-informed service delivery is outlined as a key way forward.
Robinson comments that -
Despite consistent reports of repeated experiences of violence occurring both before and whilst living homeless, it was observed that little current local documentation or wider policy acknowledgment of these exists. Disturbingly, reports about episodes of violence revealed that positive engagement with responding emergency and support services was rare and in many cases was never even sought, and that the opportunity for the follow-up of past traumatic events was even rarer. Most distressing, however, was the perception identified amongst victims that often brutal and repetitive victimisation was a 'normal' and accepted part of everyday life in the past and present, and an expected part of everyday life in the future.
She continues that -
violent victimisation still receives limited acknowledgment within policy development or academic research, despite the fact that existing studies, both in Australia and internationally, consistently document that people experiencing homelessness report a horrendous and disproportionate level of victimisation, including repeated experiences of childhood abuse, domestic and family violence, rape, physical and sexual assault, and robbery (see, for example, Buhrich, Hodder & Teesson 2000; Jasinski et al. 2005; Kipke et al. 1997; Kushel et al. 2003; Larney et al. 2009; North, Smith & Spitznagel 1994; Taylor & Sharpe 2008). It is clear that repeated experiences of violent victimisation are more likely for those whose homelessness is both prolonged and made complex by mental illness and substance abuse, and yet the wide-ranging and often enduring impacts of victimisation are rarely acknowledged and considered as part of 'housing plus' (Morrison 2009, p.1) responses to homelessness.
Given the small but nonetheless powerful body of available research evidence which concludes, 'a history of violent victimisation is associated with the initiation and prolongation of homelessness' (Kushel et al. 2003, p.2492), it is also deeply troubling that more commonly public policy and public opinion address homeless people as perpetrators of crime (Strategic Partners 1999, p.37). This is disturbing in a context in which one Australian study concluded simply that 'a lifetime experience of trauma is common among homeless people' (Buhrich, Hodder & Teesson 2000, p.966), with half of the female participants reporting rape and over half of male and female participants reporting physical assault (Buhrich, Hodder & Teesson 2000, p.965). Half of the homeless respondents in a more recent Australian study indicated they had been violently victimised at least once in the past year (Larney et al. 2009, p.348).
As Gaetz (2004, p. 447) concludes, however, 'the homeless in general are cast not as real or potential victims ... but rather, as criminal offenders' (see also Alder 1991, p.3; Strategic Partners 1999, pp.4–5) and as a result public policy falls short of fully confronting violent victimisation as a central theme in homelessness. As Morrison (2009, pp.2–3) points out in the Australian context, for example, it is a surprising oversight that neither homeless policy nor research yet adequately addresses sexual violence, which remains so pivotal in the lives of many homeless women in particular. It has also been argued that crime prevention frameworks implicitly underpin the current policy and practice shift towards early intervention strategies aimed at homeless young people in particular (Strategic Partners 1999, p.37). Here again, an explicit recognition of young homeless people’s likely experience of violent victimisation remains missing.
The silencing of homeless people’s experience of victimisation is ensured socially by beliefs that homeless people are somehow deserving of violence because of their risky lifestyles – most extremely demonstrated in the active perpetration of violent hate crimes against those homeless (NCH/NLCHP 2008; Wessler & Melnick 2005). It is also ensured institutionally by the exclusion of homeless people from national crime surveys which inform crime prevention policy and through the evolution of service sectors without resources and time to offer more than superficial care to homeless people. Further, the entrenched under-reporting of victimisation by homeless people suspicious of law enforcement and emergency health agencies only serves to further cyclically perpetuate these silences. It is also tragically ironic that in the public domain homeless people are understood as a threat, despite the fact that, internationally and in Australia, homeless people strikingly report random members of the community (Alder 1991, p. 6; Ballintyne 1999, p.15; Newburn & Rock 2005, p.27) and indeed law enforcement officers (Alder 1991, p.6; Zakrison, Hamel & Hwang 2004) as major perpetrators of violent crime against them. ...
[S]tudies confirm the findings of international research that violence is endemic to the experience of homelessness, particularly long-term iterative homelessness, is linked to poor mental health and substance abuse, and has cumulative and lasting impacts on victims’ continuing vulnerability to poor physical and mental health, to housing instability and to further violent victimisation. These findings are deeply worrying in the context in which it has been estimated that, at any one time, at least a quarter of homeless populations in countries such as Australia may be experiencing long-term iterative homelessness with associated high and complex needs (Reynolds 2007, pp.4–5).
