Youth homelessness in San Francisco: a life cycle approach

HIV risk behaviors and seroprevalence are particularly high among street youth. Though many programs have been designed to serve them, street youth have low rates of service utilization. The aim of this street-based, ethnographic project was to study the social and cultural context of street life in this population. Data were collected by participant observation, exploratory interviews and semi-structured interviews. Twenty street youth (15-23 years old; six female), recruited from street sites in San Francisco, participated in the interviews. Field notes and transcriptions were analyzed using an inductive technique for model building. This analysis yielded a proposed model of the life cycle of youth homelessness. In the first on the street stage, youth face an intense psychological feeling of outsiderness, and an urgency to meet basic needs. These stresses either lead to an escape from street life or to a process of acculturation to the street. Initiation to the street is facilitated by street mentors, who provide youth with survival skills. In the stasis stage, youth reach a tenuous equilibrium in which they can meet their basic needs. A strong street ethic allows youth to rationalize significant conflicts and frequent physical suffering. Youth in stasis are repeatedly thrown into disequilibrium, crises that frequently cause them to come into greater contact with mainstream society. After repeated episodes of disequilibrium, some youth extricate themselves from street life, finding a new identity in mainstream society. Otherwise, youth return to the street, in an episode of recidivism. The life cycle model suggests that street youth who are most open to intervention are those who are in transitional states, i.e., those who have just arrived on the street or those who are in crisis (disequilibrium). If this model is validated in a larger population of youth, programs that are aimed at these two stages in the life cycle could potentially effectively complement existing programs, which are usually focused on youth in stasis.