Spatial dimensions

Figure 3 (overleaf) is a map of the different types of provision accessed by the women.

Included are (female/male only and mixed-sex) hostels, a hotel, day centres and various

151 then you just go sit on the stairs like, say if it’s got fifteen floors you sleep on the under the library, next to the library. It’s warm and there’s like fans there and

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specialist advice and support services focusing on housing and health needs. The map also depicts rough sleeper sites. Many of the women described the geographical location of service provision as instrumental in shaping their experience of homelessness. For example, Georgia advocated a particular female only hostel because of the location it occupied in the city. Its location removed her directly from another area which she believed may well have facilitated her use of drugs:

This one is the best cause it’s in the centre of town, I know people from all over, people don’t live that far away that I know and it just gets is out of the place. I know I probably would start taking hard drugs if I stayed in Byker, I would probably have been on smack or something now. (Georgia aged20)

Women with experience of rough sleeping emphasised the importance of finding a sheltered space in close proximity to a day centre. They talked about the advantages associated with their choice of location, the type of service they sought access to and the emotional impact of knowing that external influences reshaped the individual cartographies which they themselves constructed. Their narratives also reveal the different types of sheltered space they accessed when sleeping rough:

Five months solid I was on the streets in an old car place. It had just become abandoned and there was a couple of people knew and it was warm, it was close to where we could just wake up on a morning and go and get a wash and that at [Day Centre]. A couple of months it got burnt down. People started to use it for heroin, so more people were finding out about it and they’ve burnt it. (Kelly aged 26)

All of the women interviewed in this study (whether sleeping rough or residing in accommodation based projects) created a ‘food route’ involving one or more of the food services depicted in Figure 2. None of the women’s maps included all three of the day centres providing food. Sakura’s weekday routine consisted of morning visits to a day centre wherein she breakfasted and interacted with fellow service users and staff. In the afternoon she visited a library service and multiple retail outlets in the centre of town until such time that another of the day centres opened for evening service. Similarly, Tracey’s personal map was based on her

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access to two day centres located at opposite ends of the city centre. Whilst both addressed her basic needs, she prioritised one above the other.

During the daytime she used the facilities in a day centre specialising in medical healthcare because of the amenities it offered and its location. It was situated in an area she wanted to reside in and near to a hostel she sought access to. This service became her main source of survival whilst living on the street, though it was supplemented with weekly nocturnal visits to another day centre in a neighbouring area. Moving between the different locales reveals the level of importance homeless women attach to particular types of provision. This point also reflects Cloke et al’s (2008) finding that homeless people travel to meet basic survival needs.

What transpired from the women’s narratives was the construction of specialised and dynamic maps based on personal and emergent needs. For non-statutory homeless women, this included finding a sheltered space. Hence the maps of (current and former) female rough sleepers were embedded with knowledge of night-shelters and rough sleeper sites (some of which were public knowledge, others were less publicised). In the accounts given, female rough sleepers talked about the different spaces of homelessness they inhabited and the strategies they employed in response to the institutional and public spaces in which they found themselves located. The women’s maps convey an intricate understanding of the environment in terms of where, when and how to derive positive benefits from it:

When I was on the streets, me friend went and brought is up to the night shelter, so I actually used to sleep just in there on the floor. It was 10 o’clock on a Friday night it opened, you came and got some soup, a sleeping bag, came upstairs and we all lay on the floor. We would all sleep here on a Friday, Saturday and Sunday night through to the Monday but on a Saturday we got hoyed out at eight o’clock because obviously it is not a working day here, it never has been. (Hannah aged 24)

I’ve slept outside a few times, I’ve slept in a few squats with other people, there’s a few buildings, big tall ones and if you buzz and somebody lets you in, then you just go sit on the stairs like, say if it’s got fifteen floors you sleep on the twelfth because nobody uses the stairs, they use the elevator. (Sarah aged 22) Was loads of people’s sometimes cause it’s a popular place for people to stay

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under the library, next to the library. It’s warm and there’s like fans there and they blow hot heat out, obviously you wanna keep warm. (Lauren aged 33)

Whilst some female rough sleepers purposely opted to bed down in city centre sites, others sought out less public locations on the outskirts of the city, believing that they were less likely to be joined by other rough sleepers or approached by members of the public. The volatility of individual maps was apparent in the women’s descriptions of how, when and where they publicized or indeed, hid their homelessness from services, fellow homeless people and members of the public.

It is clear that despite homeless women’s practical knowledge of the social milieu, their routines of movement are primarily shaped by the geographies of service provision. In the next section, the way in which the temporal dimensions of homeless services and public space govern women is examined.