Julia Wardhaugh - Sub City: Young People, Homelessness and Crime

First published 2000 by Ashgate Publishing

Published 2017 by Routledge
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Copyright Julia Wardhaugh 2000

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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Wardhaugh, Julia, 1960
Sub city : young people, homelessness and crime
1. Homeless youth 2. Homelessness 3. Crime
I. Title
362.7'4

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 99-76348

ISBN 13: 978-1-85972-510-8 (hbk)

ISBN: 9781351897167 (ebk)

Three research projects form the empirical basis of this book. The most extensive was that funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) from 1992-95 (reference number R000233540). Thanks are therefore due to the ESRC for supporting the Young People, Lawbreaking, Criminalisation and Homelessness in Three Central England Cities (or the Three Cities Project). The joint grant-holders and co-directors of this project were Julia Wardhaugh (University of Wales Bangor) and Pat Carlen (University of Bath), and the research assistant was Paul Bridges. The qualitative fieldwork was conducted by Julia Wardhaugh and Paul Bridges. My thanks to Paul Bridges for conducting a few of the interviews cited in this work, and for the thoughts and experiences we shared while working together on this project. At the time of the project all the research staff were at the University of Keele.

The analysis of rural homelessness and crime derives from my involvement in two small research projects. The first was conducted in Shropshire in 1992, and was funded by Shropshire probation service, Shrewsbury and Atcham Borough Council, District of the Wrekin Council, Bridgnorth District Council, Council of the Borough of Oswestry, North Shropshire District Council, Stonham Housing Association, Adullam Homes Housing Association and Telford Christian Council. Pat Carlen was the grantholder on this Shropshire Single Homelessness project. The second rural-based project arose from a small grant made to me in 1998 by the University of Wales Bangor for the investigation of homelessness and begging in north Wales: I am grateful to them and to Jane Jones for her work as research assistant on this project.

In the course of these three projects contact was made with numerous agencies and individuals, and they all without exception offered insights from their own experience. My thanks are offered to all those named here. In Birmingham: West Midlands probation service (Homeless Offenders Unit); Birmingham Standing Committee for Single Homelessness; West Midlands police; Carole Gething House, New Boot, Tennyson House and Trentham House hostels (all St. Basils); St. Basils Centre; HARP; Youthlink; Catalyst; Birmingham City Council Housing Department; LINK advice service; St.Martins drop-in centre. In Manchester: the Big Issue offices; Minshull Street day centre (Greater Manchester probation service); Shades youth advice centre; New Beswick House hostel; Greater Manchester CHAR; Lifeshare; Albert Kennedy Trust; the Survivors Project; Manchester Housing Consortium (later known as Creative Support); Chorlton bail hostel; Stopover hostel. In North Wales: Sylfaen, a Childrens Society youth project; the Big Issue offices, Bangor; Conwy County Youth Homlessness Forum. In Shropshire: STAY, Brunei House, Chiltern House and London House hostels; Homeless in Oswestry Action Project; Youth in Crisis, Telford; Shelter Shrewsbury; Shrewsbury Christian centre; South Shropshire Young Persons Housing Project; South Shropshire Housing Association; Wrekin Housing Task Force; Telford Christian Council; Shrewsbury Youth Centre; and staff from each of the agencies funding this project. In Stoke-on-Trent: Potteries Young Homeless Project; Resettlement Project North Staffs; Shelton Neighbourhood Centre; Salvation Army hostel; YMCA hostel; St. Marks night shelter; Granville House hostel; Potteries Housing Association; Department of Social Security, Hanley and Longton; Stoke-on-Trent City Council Housing Department; North Staffordshire Housing Consortium; North Staffordshire probation service; Staffordshire police; Staffordshire social services; Wenger House probation hostel; Citizens Advice bureau (Longton). In Wolverhampton: Haven housing project. My thanks go also to the senior probation officers at HM Brinsford and HM Hindley Young Offenders Institutions.

Some of the material included in chapter one appears as Down and Outers: fieldwork among street homeless people in R.D.King and E.Wincup (eds) (forthcoming) Doing Research in Crime and Justice, Oxford University Press. Chapter four has appeared as The unaccommodated woman: home, homelessness and identity in The Sociological Review, 1999, 47 (1):91-109. An earlier version of the Manchester case-study presented in chapter six was published as Homeless in Chinatown: deviance and social control in Cardboard city, in Sociology, 1996, 30(4):701-16.

Jane Jones is a graduate student at the University of Wales, Bangor, who is currently conducting some original research in the field of rural criminology. I am very grateful to her for her archival research and contribution of ideas which helped in the writing of the North Wales case-study in chapter two. Particular thanks go to Claire Davis, research administrator at the Centre for Comparative Criminology and Criminal Justice at the University of Wales Bangor, for her skill and patience in preparing the manuscript for publication. I am grateful to Danny, a Big Issue vendor in Llandudno, for permission to use his photograph. I would like to thank Her Majestys Stationery Office for permission to use two extracts from the 1998 Manchester City Centre map, used in chapter six. Thank you to Stephen Carter for permission to use the photograph taken of him while visiting North Wales.

My special thanks go to all the homeless young people who trusted me with their stories: in talking to them I was able to begin to understand some of the meanings of home and homelessness. All personal names used have been changed.