‘There’s nothing I can do to stop it’ : homelessness among autistic people in a British city

Autistic people appear to have a higher risk of becoming and remaining homeless than people without autism. This article is based on a wider research study exploring diverse homelessness experiences in Oxford, UK. Using life mapping, a visual research method, we gained verbal and visual accounts of participants’ housing and homeless histories. These accounts support past evidence of higher than expected levels of autism among homeless people, while highlighting for the first time specific, additional risks of homelessness among autistic people. This group also appeared to have fewer means to reduce the risk of homelessness, and faced multiple challenges to resolving their homelessness. Our findings extend existing understandings of autism and homelessness, and of the disabling practices that autistic people may face within the diversity of homeless experiences, while adding valuable biographic detail to the factors leading to homelessness and attempts to exit homelessness. We also discuss potential policy interventions.