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One in five homeless women ‘turn to prostitution’

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Nearly one fifth of homeless women have resorted to prostitution to escape a night on the streets, a study has found.

Commissioned by homeless charity Crisis, the survey found people were turning to crime and unwanted sexual relationships to avoid sleeping rough.

The Hidden Homelessness report, undertaken by Sheffield Hallam University, shows homeless women are six times as likely as homeless men to engage in sex work to get off the streets.

More than one in four (28 percent) of women and had spent one or more nights with an unwanted sexual partner to accommodate themselves, compared with 14 percent of men in similar situation.

The study of 437 single homeless people across the UK found nearly a third had committed minor crime, such as shoplifting or antisocial behaviour, in the hope of being taken into custody.

About one in five said they had avoided bail or committed an imprisonable offence as a means to resolve their housing problems, while 18 percent admitted spending time in accident and emergency departments for the same reason.

Crisis chief executive Leslie Morphy said: ‘One of the reasons why the research is so damning is that it focuses on those people who don’t have any right to social housing or supportive housing.’

‘There are three things that are particularly shocking. The percentage of people who said they had ended up in an unwanted sexual relationship simply because they needed a roof over their head.’

‘Even more shocking is the 19% of women who said they had resorted to prostitution to get a roof over their head.’

‘That was followed by people who had made the decision to commit petty crimes in order to end up in custody or who use accident and emergency facilities to avoid ending up rough sleeping.’

‘Sleeping on the streets is in itself extremely dangerous and cold. People are clearly doing the things we’d talked to people about and anecdotally knew they did.’

According to the national charity, homeless people are 35 times more likely to commit suicide than the general population.

You can read the full story on 24dash.com.

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