Surviving
the
Streets
Sean Kidd
Yale Program on Recovery and Community Health
November, 2004
1
Some Background
• Most homeless youths have past histories of abuse and
instability1
• On the streets, victimization often continues,
accompanied by numerous health risks2-4
• Outcomes of these experiences include high rates of
depression among a range of mental health problems,
and high levels of suicidality3-6
• Mortality rates are over 11 times that of the general
youth population7
2
The extent of youth homelessness
• No accurate estimate
• Problems in this include
• large numbers of hidden homeless
• ambiguity about the definition of homelessness
• Rough estimate: 1-2 million homeless youth in North
America8
3
The “Streets”
• Enormous range of lives lived on the streets. Range in:
• Particular context
• Social sphere
• Type of and success in adjustment
• Cycle in and out of different “forms” of street life
• Generally, fewer resources
4
The Study
• Goals:
• verify trapped model of suicidality
• Better understand resilience
• Participants:
• 208 youths, aged 14-24
• 122 male, 84 female
• Interviewed on streets and in agencies in NYC and
Toronto
5
Presented here:
• Results of analysis of narratives on strength and
resilience
• Interviews:
• Conversational
• Key questions included
“What keeps you going?”
“What do you pull from to get by?”
“What is a good time for you?”
• Analysis: Content analysis of transcribed interviews and
field notes
6
Interview Experience
• Welcome
• People pushed themselves
• Conversations lasted anywhere from 20 minutes to 3
hours
7
“I figured out who I am”
• “You kind of know and start acting out who
you really are out here.”
• “You have to adapt…even for the wrong
reasons. You have to adapt out of
convenience. You have to adapt to get
what you want. You have to adapt
because you have no other choice. And
sometimes it is good to compromise and
take other points of view.”
8
“What the hell am I doing here?”
• “I never thought that I would end up in this
situation. I guess that’s why I don’t
like…this is not what I wanted
[crying]…What the hell am I doing here?”
9
“It has been a good change.”
• “Since being out here I have realized how
short and precious life is.”
10
“…it’s hard to get out.”
• “If something is familiar to you, it is comforting.
You know the people in it. You know the lifestyle
of it. And there are not too many things that are
unexpected. It’s the same and it’s habitual.
People fear the unknown. Becoming sober and
changing your life is like ‘What am I going to do?
How am I supposed to live? How am I supposed
to get money?’ I know this. I am good at this.”
11
“The blue pill or the red pill?”
• “I can never blame anything on anybody. It can’t
be all like ‘My mom kicked me out and that’s the
reason I prostituted.’ It’s me. It’s all me. I kind of
took the hard way growing up. It is like the Alice
in Wonderland thing: ‘The blue pill or the red
pill?’, and I picked the blue pill.”
12
Strength and Independence
• “At home you are sheltered. You’ve got your
mom and your dad or whatever. Out here it is
just you. You learn a lot of independence.”
• “The street, it helped me to be strong. I used to
be really sensitive. I had to get strong because
there are people who try to hurt you out there.
They treat you like a piece of garbage and you
have to get some strength.”
13
“You learn street smarts.”
• “I grew by using my instincts. Normally, when
you are in a house, all of your instincts are gone.
And now when I look at people I learned not to
take anything from them.”
• “it is not book smart, but it definitely gives a lot to
a person…someone can go to a university and
know a lot of shit but they would come out here
and wouldn’t know what to do with
themselves….people definitely take pride in
that.”
14
Time as a reference
• “I am bitter. I don’t trust people. I am a
very negative person. It hurts. I never used
to be a negative person…I am angry for
having to be out here. It is not healthy.”
• “I see people who had good backgrounds
and they will get in a bad situation with me
and my friends and they’re scared.”
15
Time as a reference cont’d
• “I don’t want to end up on the street.
Honestly, some of those guys will be
asking for spare change for the rest of
their lives.”
• “We live in the moment. Me and my sister
had to carry our friend’s dead body out of
a squat in New Orleans. It really just
makes you realize how short and how
precious life is.”
16
“The kind of love and respect a child should have.”
• “I didn’t want to do dope but I didn’t have
anything to push me not to do it…I had
nothing to quit for. But once I had my
daughter it was a whole new world. By
having a baby I could get off the dope and
put my life in perspective. Which is good
you know? I have a clearer mind on
things.”
17
“I had a few people show me how it worked.”
• “Some people come out on the streets like any
other normal teenager, and then in a couple of
weeks they are dressed all punk or whatever.
They feel safe, putting themselves in some kind
of group…stronger when they feel like they have
a group to back them up.”
• “I was lucky when I came down here that I had a
few people show me how it worked and what to
do. But I have seen other people who it goes
really bad for.”
18
“It is family.”
• “It is family [street family]. Those of us who don’t
have family…we were fucked up kids and we
became fucked up teenagers. You never actually
feel any connection with the family you have.
When you get out here you finally find genuinely
good people…they are always a part of me.”
19
“He wouldn’t like a crackhead for his girlfriend.”
• “It is him that gets me up, when I really
don’t want to. He will say ‘Fucking get up
already.’ Sometimes I am walking down
the sidewalk and I just sit down and you
just feel like staying there and sleeping
there and not moving. But he is always
pushing me to keep on going.”
20
“They are only there when you have something.”
• “You really can’t trust anybody too much,
especially on the street, because a lot of people
lie to get what they need.”
• “Everybody needs to feel loved. It exists on a
number of levels. There is protection, you feel
safer. It is more peace of mind. What they really
lack and need is someone to make them feel
human. Someone to make them feel connected.
Understanding is fairly easy to find since we are
all in the same boat.”
21
“I am trying to separate from that world but I can’t.”
• “If you are coming out of it, you can’t keep people on the
street. And if they are really your friends, they will
understand that you are trying to better yourself. And if
not, then they are not your friends. Because misery loves
company.”
• “And you know maybe if I didn’t have anyone caring
about me I would be nothing. But I do have people care
about me and I don’t want to disappoint them. That’s
what keeps me going. It’s just being able to call my mom
and tell her “Oh yeah, I’m good. I still live in the same
place.” It is normal. Not normal is turning tricks on the
side of the road. Normal is having a place and paying
your bills.”
22
“Normal”
• “Because I wasn’t thinking about quitting. None
of my friends said anything. They didn’t tell me I
looked shitty or that I should stop. They all just
suggested we go do more.“
23
“Our culture is sick.”
• “I can’t remember who said it, but someone said
that rudeness was a sign of a sick culture. And,
as a pan handler, when I hear “I’m not giving you
shit to pay for your crack habit”…I am too fat to
be a crack addict. What the fuck are these
people talking about? So, I know society is sick
because of the way that people look at me.”
24
“I feel better about myself when I know that I am
helping someone else.”
• “I have figured out that I feel better about myself
when I know that I am helping someone else to
not go through any of the things I have been
through. My best friend just found out he has
AIDS. He was raped a couple of years back by a
bum on a train. He has gotten really heavy into
drugs, and I forced him to clean up. It makes me
feel better knowing that there’s one less person
suffering. Because he was going to kill himself.”
25
“I still have faith in something.”
• “Only God really helps. He is the only one who knows
me. Who can hear and understand what I say and who
doesn’t let me down. He is the only one who really
helps.”
26
“The drugs were always there for me.”
• “If you sit down and listen to the conversations
that go on with the people around here, almost
everything revolves around drugs and making
money for drugs.”
• “When things get really bad, the only thing that
keeps me from wanting to just roll over and die
is heroin.”
27
Literature on street youth coping
• growing literature on how street youth variously cope
with their circumstances10-16
• Themes include:
• knowledge of streetwise skills
• support from other youth
• taking responsibility/concern for friends
• spirituality
• Independence
• learning from difficult experiences
• Lazarus and Folkman’s coping theory17
28
Looking more broadly
• implications of assuming a homeless identity…a doubleedged sword18-21
• Erving Goffman on the adjustment of stigmatized
persons28
• Parallels in literature on reactions to severe chronic
stress and trauma22-27
• Lazarus and Folkman continued17
29
Bruno Bettelheim:
• “We find ourselves in an extreme situation when we
are suddenly catapulted into a set of conditions
where our old adaptive mechanisms and values do
not apply any more and when some of them may
even endanger the life they were meant to protect.
Then we are, so to say, stripped of our whole
defensive system and thrown back to rock bottom—
whence we must carve out a new set of attitudes,
values, and way of living as required by the new
situation” (Bettelheim, 1979, p. 11)
30
Conclusions
• The shifts of homelessness:
• Identity
• Agency
• Connectedness
• Worth/Values
• The various homeless realities (contexts and
individuals)
• A crucial time of life
31
Implications
• Addressing the central adaptive process:
• Resisting the streets vs. healthy homelessness
• Finding ways off the street
• Notions of the mainstream “monolith”
• Rewriting life narratives
32
References
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2. Greene, J. M., & Ringwalt, C. L. (1996). Youth and familial substance use’s association with
suicide attempts among runaway and homeless youth. Substance Use & Misuse, 31, 10411058.
3 Whitbeck, L. B., Hoyt, D. R. & Bao, W. (2000). Depressive symptoms and co-occurring
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References cont’d
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