Reasons for Homelessness

• Reasons for Homelessness

  1. Decrease in institutions for mentally ill

  2. Ruling that patients in mental health institutions had to be paid for their labour

  3. Conservatives wanting to decrease expenditure on these institutions

  4. Closing of many mental health institutions

  5. Residents of these institutions ending up on the streets and homeless
• Reasons for Homelessness

  1. Continuing Urban Renewal Policies

  2. Demolition of inner-city 'skid row' hotels that had housed exceptionally poor

  3. Difficulty for those who used the hotels to find alternative shelter
• Rising unemployment

  Rise of depression, despair and life on the streets
• Budget Cuts and lower Welfare Benefits

  Contributed to the sense of hopelessness
• Declining marriage rates and the increased number of single mothers

  Increase in the number of homeless women
• Lack of support from partners and feeling that the authorities were unsympathetic


  Led many women to give up and live on the streets
• Increase of crack cocaine in inner cities


  Resulted in addicts spending all their money making them unable to afford regular living accommodation