The fact that an increasing number of women are now living on the street is certainly an important indicator of a growing problem, but it would be inappropriate to analyze the nature of the problem of women’s homeless in terms of street homelessness. Similarly, it is certainly the case that paying a high percentage of income toward rent is frequently associated with hardship and may often force women to live without adequate food and other necessities in order to pay rent. On the other hand, "rent to income ratios" or generalized "affordability" criteria have often been associated with the assumption that those who must pay high proportions of income toward rent or mortgage costs are more likely to default and face eviction or lose their homes. Since women are more likely to be caring for children and to be paying high percentages of income toward rent, such an assumption has obvious discriminatory implications for women.

Other definitions of homelessness are derived from a broader concept of housing adequacy, such as the definition suggested by the United Nations Year of Shelter for the Homeless:

However, it is unclear whether this definition would include within its ambit a woman who is sleeping with her children on the floor of a friend’s apartment or whether "affordable prices" would include the requirement, in the Canadian context, of timely access to adequate income assistance necessary to pay the rent in the event of job loss or other change of circumstance. A focus on housing "adequacy" may divert attention from other critical determinants of homelessness for women. It is particularly important, in our view, to recognize that homelessness relates to more than simply housing and that a review of the causes of homelessness needs to consider a much wider range of government programs and policies than housing programs per se.

Women’s housing crises leading to homelessness often result from short-term changes and transitions which are not captured by general affordability or adequacy measures and are often overlooked in programmatic responses to homelessness.

Women are more likely to be in non-permanent employment and are more vulnerable to lay-offs and changes in income than men. Women assume disproportionate responsibility for dealing with needs which may suddenly arise from illness and disability within the immediate or extended family. Women experience dramatic income loss after separation (an average 23% decrease in income while men experience a 10% increase). On divorce, women who are sole support mothers have an average 33% decrease in household income. Pregnancy and care of young children often results in interruptions in earnings. Domestic violence and sexual assault may suddenly create housing needs that were not anticipated a few months earlier, and may suddenly render emergency housing options or shared accommodation untenable.

These types of unique challenges in women’s lives in relation to income stability, daycare, transportation, dependents with disabilities, personal security and the needs of children define the complex interdependencies behind women’s homelessness. Proposed solutions need to be contoured to these realities. Increased supply of subsidized housing, for example, will not address the needs of women in these types of situations if the allocation system restricts access to subsidy to those who applied a number of years previously. Similarly, child tax credits or employment insurance supplementary benefits linked to a previous year’s annual income are unlikely to meet these kinds of transitional crises.

In this context, lengthy waiting lists for subsidized housing units are frequently cited as evidence of the homelessness crisis and of the need for new housing supply but they are rarely cited as evidence of a need for financial assistance for impoverished households to be able to pay rent. In fact, those on the lengthy waiting lists might be more accurately described as waiting for "rent subsidies" rather than simply waiting for housing, as unsubsidized units in the same complexes usually have comparably short waiting lists or no waiting lists at all.

Housing issues and homelessness, of course, cannot be entirely reconfigured as income issues. But there needs to be a better integration of policy analysis in these two areas to adequately understand and address the issue of women’s homelessness. If housing advocates sometimes ignore important income issues that primarily affect women, income policy analysts also tend to ignore important housing issues for women. For example, policy analysis of problems related to the transition from social assistance to paid employment have been addressed under the rubric of "child poverty" and addressed through a "child benefit" without any analysis of the way in which access to housing allowance or housing subsidy affects this transition. A woman with children living in unsubsidized housing who receives a variable shelter allowance as part of her social assistance will lose this critical benefit when she goes off social assistance, while a woman in subsidized housing will simply receive a similar housing allowance from a different source. Rather than considering ways in which all women in these circumstances could have access to an income supplement necessary to be able to pay for housing, policy responses to child poverty have simply ignored the issue of housing costs and shelter subsidies, and in many cases fail to provide benefits to families who lack the necessary income to pay for housing for themselves and their children.

It is also important not to restrict consideration of women’s homelessness to issues related solely to urban rental markets. CMHC data on average rents and vacancy rates invariably suggest that affordability and vacancy problems are most severe in large cities. But in a small universe of rental units, as is common in small towns, a vacancy rate of 5% may correspond to only two available apartments, neither of which may be appropriate or affordable for low income households and may thus correspond to a serious "housing crisis" for low income women. Also, CMHC average rents in rural areas usually do not include heat and utilities. In Toronto, on the other hand, heat and utilities costs are included in rent in over 95% of units surveyed by CMHC and therefore included in CMHC’s data on average rents. In northern communities, where apartments are frequently heated with electricity and improperly insulated, these heating costs can be prohibitive.

Census data on "gross rent" which includes heat and utilities cost, thus show a very different picture of the reality facing rural and northern women than CMHC data. In Ontario, for example, a significantly higher proportion of lone parent households in a number of rural areas are forced to pay more than 50% of income toward "gross rent" than in Toronto. This affordability crisis for rural and northern women is exacerbated by transportation costs, which are an integral component of housing choices made by women in rural areas. Purchasing and maintaining a car and driving long distances to doctors’ offices, shopping, schools and work are unavoidable costs for those living in rural housing, and may pose a real threat to maintaining it. For Aboriginal women living in remote northern communities, costs for food and other basic necessities include large amounts for transportation, as do costs associated with access to basic medical and other services. Housing costs cannot really be isolated from other costs in assessing affordability issues in these situations.

Prevailing approaches to housing and homelessness focus almost exclusively on urban rental markets and have tended to underestimate the importance of homeownership as an option for many women. While it is true that the majority of homeowners in Canada have significantly higher incomes and more wealth than tenants, there are nevertheless many low income women for whom homeownership is the most affordable or, in many rural areas, the only viable housing option. Almost a third of single mothers in Canada are homeowners, many of them low income As will be seen in Chapter Two, many more women would find home ownership a more affordable and economical option if barriers denying them access to lower interest credit maintained by CMHC and implemented by banks and credit unions were eliminated.

In addition to women’s poverty, there are many other intersecting disadvantages which need to be considered in an analysis of the diverse experiences and determinants of women’s homelessness.

Aboriginal women, especially single mothers, have the highest incidence of poverty in Canada – more than twice the rate of non-Aboriginal women. Aboriginal women are thus uniquely vulnerable to all of the barriers in accessing housing that are experienced by other low-income women and single mothers and additionally confront disadvantage that is particular to their position as Aboriginal women. An Aboriginal woman once dispossessed of her band membership for marrying a non-Aboriginal, for example, will not only face widespread discrimination in the private rental market, she may also be prevented from returning to her reserve community because of discriminatory allocations of on-reserve housing and may be reluctant to seek accommodation in a non-Aboriginal run shelter for fear of experiencing further hostility and discrimination.

Young women are at great risk of homelessness. Recent shelter data show dramatic increases in young people relying on shelters, with almost a quarter of Toronto’s shelter admissions now between the ages of 15 and 24. Over two thirds of women aged 15-24 have low incomes. Young women are virtually all disqualified by the use of minimum income criteria in rental housing and are unable to provide prospective landlords with credit, rental or a lengthy employment history. Disqualified on this basis by most private market apartments, young women also encounter barriers accessing housing subsidies through non-profit housing. Applications for subsidized housing are not accepted until young people turn 16. If the waiting list is 8 years long for a unit, 15-24 year old heads of household are extremely unlikely to be tenants in subsidized housing.

Older women are one of the poorest groups in Canada. In 1997 approximately 50% of unattached women 65 and older were living in low income situations. Older women, as compared to older men, are less adequately housed, and less likely to be homeowners or to have the economic resources to afford existing housing. It was recently reported in Ottawa that elderly women are increasingly resorting to shelters.

Immigrant women also face many systemic barriers and what have been described as "unique challenges" to accessing housing. Like young women, they lack credit and reference information and are likely to be disqualified by income and employment requirements. They are also unable to access housing subsidies because they could not have applied for housing until they secured landed immigrant status, and are thus unlikely to be allocated a unit under prevalent chronological ranking of applications. Immigrant women often face additional barriers related race, ethnicity and family status.

Disabled women also experience a complicated intersection of disadvantage linked with homelessness. A 1995 study by DAWN Canada showed that 62% of women with disabilities live below the poverty line. Research also indicates that 60% of women with disabilities in Canada are either partially or totally dependent on the welfare system for basic daily needs. Women with disabilities have to deal with landlords who are unwilling to accommodate their needs, in both the for-profit and not-for-profit sectors. At the same time, government cuts to social programs such as home care have a direct impact on access to adequate housing, forcing disabled women out of their homes and into institutional care. For disabled women in rural areas, institutional care is often located long distances from their families and friends.

All of these groups of women share common characteristics of marginalization from policy making and from political power. Their housing crises are experienced in isolation from one another, in the context of a society in which women are made to feel ashamed if they cannot pay their rent or properly provide for their children. The challenge of understanding and properly conceptualizing women’s homelessness is to counteract the marginalization of these women’s experiences, not only within government policy making and program administration, but also within advocacy movements addressing poverty, homelessness or human rights.