Request for the academics among us

DistrictAccurate · 2021-08-31T16:09:54+00:00

See this: https://ec.europa.eu/social/BlobServlet?docId=21629&langId=en

The broader the definition the higher the proportion of women. For example, one difference would be whether women in women's shelters or those living with families and friends are to be counted as homeless. Among rough sleepers in brussels, about 8 out of 10 are men (page 38).

Whilst they say something about the undercounting of women, in the end it once again boils down to different ways of saying the same thing. Here is a document by the same author https://www.feantsa.org/public/user/Resources/magazine/2019/Autumn/2._Family_homelessness_-_a_gender_issue._Isabel_Baptista.pdf

They talk about family homelessness and hidden homelessness before resorting back to the fact thay they are hidden because they live with friends and family, for example.

They also resort back to the same old "let's only look at this sub-form" - similarly to when many newspaper headlines focused on the rise in female suicides in an arbitrary age group without referencing the highest rate of male suicides overall in two decades.

For the definitions for Belgium, see page 24 for the text, page 27 for the corresponding ETHOS-Light categories and page 112 for an explanation of those.

Oncefa2 · 2021-08-31T15:53:46+00:00

Generally speaking men are discriminated against in housing (including rent, buying housing, and financing / mortgages), more likely to be homeless, more likely to be unsheltered, remain homeless longer, are more likely to be victims of crime (including violent crime), and die 3 years sooner on average even when adjusted for the life expectancy gap (I'm not sure the source on this, I think u/ JackieNaper1907 mentioned this somewhere, but in the UK, 90% of homelessness related deaths are men)

I don't have anything specific for Belgium though.

Homelessness affects men much more often, and to a much higher degree of severity, than women

Henry, M., Mahathey, A., Morrill, T., Robinson, A., Shivji, A., & Watt, R. (2018). The 2018 Annual Homeless Assessment Report (AHAR) to Congress, part 1: Point-in-time estimates of homelessness. Washington, DC: US Department of Housing and Urban Development. Available from: https://files.hudexchange.info/resources/documents/2018-AHAR-Part-1.pdf

HCH Clinicians' Network. (2001). Single Males: The Homeless Majority. Healing Hands, 5(3), 1-6. Available from: https://nhchc.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/June2001HealingHands.pdf

North, C. S., & Smith, E. M. (1993). A comparison of homeless men and women: Different populations, different needs. Community mental health journal, 29(5), 423-431. Available from: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8243048

Poole, Glen. (2015, August 6). Homelessness is a gendered issue, and it mostly impacts men. The Telegraph. Available from: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/men/thinking-man/11787304/Homelessness-is-a-gendered-issue-and-it-mostly-impacts-men.html

Most deaths due to homelessness are men

INSIDE MAN. (2014). Men are nine times more likely to die homeless. insideMAN. Available from: http://www.inside-man.co.uk/2014/12/12/men-are-nine-times-more-likely-to-die-homeless/

Thomas, B. Homelessness kills. An analysis of the mortality of homeless people in early twenty-first century England. 2012. The University of Sheffield and Crisis. [PDF] Available from: https://crisis.org.uk/media/236798/crisis_homelessness_kills2012.pdf

Discrimination against men in housing and rental markets

(Often higher than racial discrimination -- minority women often fare better than white men).

Ethnic and Gender Discrimination in the Rental Housing Market: Evidence from a Meta-Analysis of Correspondence Tests, 2006-2017. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/326514040_Ethnic_and_Gender_Discrimination_in_the_Rental_Housing_Market_Evidence_from_a_Meta-Analysis_of_Correspondence_Tests_2006-2017

Ethnic and gender discrimination in the private rental housing market in Finland: A field experiment. "a woman with an Arabic name is more likely to get a response than a man with a native, Finnish name. A man with an Arabic name is almost three time less likely to get a response than a women with a Finnish name" https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28854277/

The female poverty rate is only 4% higher than the male poverty rate, so why is homelessness and destitution so much higher among men? And what reason would these people have for suspecting that women are undercounted in homelessness stats when men make up just as large a portion of the poor as women?

https://www.unwomen.org/-/media/headquarters/attachments/sections/library/publications/2018/sdg-report-spotlight-01-gender-differences-in-poverty-and-household-composition-en.pdf

Even though homelessness is a mostly male issue, more assistance and resources are given to women

Men's shelters being replaced by women's shelters

Kaufman, Maya (2019, September 30). College Point Shelter to Open as Woman-Only Amid Backlash. Patch. Retrieved October 21, 2019, from https://patch.com/new-york/flushing-murray-hill/college-point-shelter-opens-week-will-only-house-women

Hardiman, Samual (2019, April 26). City, County unveil plan to redevelop building near Medical District for homelessness effort. Memphis Business Journal. Retrieved October 21, 2019, from https://www.bizjournals.com/memphis/news/2019/04/26/city-county-unveil-plan-to-redevelop-building-near.html

Even though homelessness is a mostly male issue, more attention is given to female homelessness than male homelessness

Goldberg, Eleanor (2015, September 9). Portland, Oregon, Mayor Wants To House All Homeless Women By End Of Year. Huffpost News. Retrieved October 21, 2019, from https://www.huffpost.com/entry/portland-oregon-mayor-wants-to-declares-homelessness-state-of-emergency_n_560bfafde4b0af3706dec4a0

Homeless Link (2017). 2017 Rough Sleeping Statistics. Homeless Link. Available from: https://www.homeless.org.uk/sites/default/files/site-attachments/Homeless%20Link%20-%20analysis%20of%20rough%20sleeping%20statistics%20for%20England%202017.pdf

https://news.ontario.ca/mma/en/2019/10/ontario-investing-in-supportive-housing-in-toronto.html

INSIDE MAN. (2014). Is this homeless charity appeal perpetuating the objectification of women and the invisibility of male victims?. insideMan. Available at: http://www.inside-man.co.uk/2014/12/12/is-this-homeless-charity-appeal-perpetuating-the-objectification-of-women-and-the-invisibility-of-male-victims/

Academia: Recent papers in Gender and homelessness (9 articles about women, 1 about men, and 6 other / both). Retrieved October 21, 2019, from https://www.academia.edu/Documents/in/Gender_and_homelessness

That's a weird way of saying 75% of homeless people are men: "1 in 4 Homeless People are Women" (Newspaper article). https://i.imgur.com/v4yuVub.jpg

TheSpaceDuck · 2021-08-31T21:30:22+00:00

I don't have the data about Belgium in particular, however in every country shelters for domestic violence victims are 90% to 100% female. That means that male victims of domestic violence (and there are a lot), especially victims of unilateral domestic violence which are those most likely to have nowhere to escape (and most of them are men) have nowhere to go while female victims do.

It follows then that if we're really counting domestic violence as a motivation for homeless shelter, either we solve the huge gender gap in DV shelters or we have an even more dire need for a male-focused approach for victims of homelessness.

Boarman21 · 2021-08-31T20:14:57+00:00