Hundreds of thousands of Americans are without a home, sleeping on streets or in temporary shelters. Nearly one-fifth of homeless Americans suffer from an untreated mental illness. Due in part to reductions in state and city budgets, many who need assistance are left to live on the street. One natural byproduct of a life on the street is criminal behavior, as adaptation to illegal acts becomes a matter of survival. Could ending homelessness reduce crime? What are ways in which that could be achieved, and whose responsibility is it? Are the homeless being unfairly blamed for street crime? This volume offers a close examination of the issue from a variety of viewpoints.

About youth crime and homelessness in Canada.

Although homelessness is a serious social problem in the United States, there is little direct information about the actual experiences of violence, past and current, among homeless people. This volume, based on the Florida Four-City Study, brings together interview material from 737 women, including structured quantitative interviews as well as in-depth qualitative interviews. The authors investigate how many homeless women have experienced violence in their lives, either as children or as adults, and then examine factors associated with experiences of violence, the consequences of violence, and types of interactions of homeless people with the justice system. The volume concludes with pragmatic and compassionate policy recommendations.

Hundreds of thousands of Americans are without a home, sleeping on streets or in temporary shelters. Nearly one-fifth of homeless Americans suffer from an untreated mental illness. Due in part to reductions in state and city budgets, many who need assistance are left to live on the street. One natural byproduct of a life on the street is criminal behavior, as adaptation to illegal acts becomes a matter of survival. Could ending homelessness reduce crime? What are ways in which that could be achieved, and whose responsibility is it? Are the homeless being unfairly blamed for street crime? This volume offers a close examination of the issue from a variety of viewpoints.

Youth homelessness increased rapidly during the late 1980s and early 1990s, at a time when street homelessness in particular became increasingly associated in the popular mind with dangerousness and criminality. This book analyzes the construction of homelessness as a social and legal 'problem' and documents young people’s own experiences of homelessness, crime and danger. Drawing on the authors’ own field work in a range of urban and rural locations, the book addresses themes of home and homelessness, of exclusion and marginality and of risk and urban incivilities.

Eleven-year-old Lisa becomes her mother’s primary support when they face the prospect of homelessness. As Dee, a single mother, struggles with the demons of her own childhood of neglect and abuse, Lisa has to quickly assume the role of an adult in an attempt to keep some stability in their lives. “Dee and Tiny” ultimately become underground celebrities in San Francisco, squatting in storefronts and performing the “art of homelessness.” Their story, filled with black humor and incisive analysis, illuminates the roots of poverty, the criminalization of poor families, and their struggle for survival.