Persistent homelessness - persistent trauma

Since 1999 when I first began working explicitly on the issue of homelessness, I have focused on the experiences of those homeless people who have continued to struggle to maintain accommodation and to search for home in the context of homelessness, often over their life course. In particular, my work has focused on the persistent experiences of homelessness of young people (2001, 2002a, 2002b, 2005), of people with mental disorders (2003a) and of squatters (2003b). It was through my work with homeless people with mental disorders, however, that I was able to learn most forcefully what I had already been exposed to in earlier work with youth - the role of trauma in the persistence of repeated experiences of homelessness.