Living on the Edge: Women, Poverty and Homelessness in Canada

Women's homelessness is often "invisible" as women rely on their domestic and sexual roles as a strategy to avoid shelters, such as taking up temporary residences in short-term sexual relationships. Recent reports suggest, however, that the visible face of homelessness in Canada is changing: youth, families, and women are the fastest growing groups in the visibly homeless and at-risk population. Homelessness in Canada is one manifestation of a wider structure of disadvantage and exclusion based on classism, sexism, and racism. These tools of exclusion offer useful explanatory and analytical accounts of the processes which structure women's vulnerability to homelessness.