Survival Strategies

All people must negotiate ways to satisfy basic human needs, and homeless people are no exception. However, the homeless routinely face serious challenges [Page 549]to survival that housed people generally do not confront or at least not with the same degree of urgency. Such challenges include securing food and shelter on a consistent basis, establishing reliable social relationships, and even finding a measure of meaning and sense of self-respect. The resources and support requisite for attending to such basic human needs are generally taken for granted by most domiciled citizens; homeless people must scramble daily to meet these needs. Doing so entails the employment of a variety of survival strategies that address material, social or relational, and psychological needs.

The survival strategies employed by the homeless vary according to such personal characteristics as age, gender, family status, ethnicity, and time spent on the street. In addition, survival routines of homeless people in any locale are embedded in specific organizational, political, and ecological contexts that encourage some strategies while simultaneously constraining the pursuit of others.

Ethnographic research has provided a window into the survival strategies of the homeless. This research is important because the illumination of the daily struggles of homeless people facilitates understanding of life on the street, which in turn can help dispel false perceptions of the homeless and suggest alternative programs for assisting different categories of homeless people based on their street experiences. These studies show us that the homeless are not merely passive actors, responding indifferently to the conditions that confront them, but are active participants in the construction of their daily lives.