There is a particular dearth investigating the role of debt in the maintenance of homelessness for single homeless people. Attention in the literature tends to be paid to structural issues, such as mechanisms of financial exclusion. Fines, credit buying (legal) and health costs (23%), use of drugs (18%) and gambling (10%) were also cited.Ī number of reviews in both the peer-reviewed and grey literatures have covered financial difficulties generally across populations of people who are multiply excluded, but the research in this area is sparse. In one of the few studies looking at debt-related mechanisms of homelessness in the Netherlands ( 7), loss of job and chronic shortage of income were cited as the most prevalent reason for debt (49% of respondents). organisational and tenancy systems around rent payment, referral for court proceedings for non-payment, local authority support for rent arrears, etc.). The role of debt in the causation and maintenance, therefore, can be seen to be an interaction between individual behaviours (spending) and environmental factors (e.g. Those systemic factors can in turn be influenced by commissioning processes and government policy, which may be in turn led by economic and ideological processes. Mental health factors, mainly associated with childhood abuse and neglect ( 6) are associated with behaviours that lead to tenancy breakdown, moderated by factors such as the environment (built and organisational), interpersonal relationships and economic factors. This multi-factored approach means that the causes and maintaining factors are highly complex in their interactions. There are many factors implicated in the causation and maintenance of homelessness ( 3), ranging from the way in which we configure our economy and geographical variation in wealth ( 4) right down to genetic predispositions of arousal ( 5). This is however likely to be a significant underestimate of the total number of people who are homeless Crisis ( 2) put the true figure of people who are homeless and living on the street at over 200,000. This was a drop from the previous year, the reduction being attributed to the “everyone in” initiative designed to reduce the incidence rate of COVID-19. In the UK in August 2020, 2,688 people were found to be sleeping on the streets of England ( 1). Homelessness remains one of the significant indicators of damaging wealth differential in developed economies.
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