Why some people who are street homeless decline offers of housing v.1
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Homeless "by choice": Why some people who are street homeless decline, or only temporarily take on, offers of housing
IRAS ID
333287
Contact name
Leila Tompkins
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
Salomons Institute for Applied Psychology, Canterbury Christ Church University
Duration of Study in the UK
1 years, 10 months, 31 days
Research summary
This study aims to develop insight into why people who are street homeless might decline housing when offered, or temporarily accept it before moving back to the streets, from their own perspectives. Homelessness, particularly sleeping rough, carries an increased risk of mental and physical ill-health and vice versa. Because of this, mental and physical health services, commissioners and policy makers need to have a clearer understanding of what contributes to this phenomenon in order to identify ways to support homeless people to move into and stay in accommodation. Research into the area is extremely limited.
This study's research questions are:
1. How do people who sleep rough experience street homelessness?
2. How do people who sleep rough describe their experiences of being housed, or offered housing?
3. How do people sleeping rough make sense of their experience in relation to declining housing, or leaving housing shortly after acquiring it?This study is qualitative, looking to interview six-to-eight people who are street homeless and have declined an offer of housing, or moved back to the streets after temporarily accepting an offer of housing, with a view to understanding more about their experience of being offered housing. Participants will be recruited via services who are currently supporting them. Interview data will be analysed using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis, a method which enables the researcher to explore participants' individual meaning-making experiences, whilst also allowing scope to tentatively identify potential themes across their experiences. It also asks the researcher to acknowledge and account as much as possible for how their own perceptions, assumptions and biases influence the course of the interview and of data analysis.
This study hopes to provide some initial data from which further studies can be developed, with a longer-term aim to support the development of good quality evidence for how service provision can be improved for this population.
LAY SUMMARY OF STUDY RESULTS:
Four themes, consisting of ten subthemes, were found:
1) Dehumanised: Reclaiming Worth and Asserting Equality
2) I Am Not who You Think I Am: Reclaiming My Identity
3) Isolated and Ignored: Striving for Connection
4) ‘I’m Used to Getting Let Down’: Ensuring My Own Survival when the System Fails.
Threaded through all four themes was a sense that participants were stripped of, yet striving for, agency.Conclusions:
It was concluded that participants had good (yet complex) reasons for declining, or only temporarily accepting, housing. Participants seemed to be driven by a desire to meet their physical and psychological needs. Participants experienced street homelessness as dehumanising and disempowering. Despite this, it was concerning to find that most participants felt physically safer on the streets than in housing, due to the safety risks faced in the housing they were offered. The housing itself, or the way in which it was offered, also compromised participants' psychological needs, which self-determination theory names as autonomy, competence (ability and skill) and relatedness (connection with others). In this sense, while living on the streets compromised participants' sense of self-worth, connection, autonomy and safety, the housing they were offered seemed to compromise these needs further. Because of this, they had to decline it.REC name
West Midlands - Coventry & Warwickshire Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
24/WM/0004
Date of REC Opinion
23 Feb 2024
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion