ABSTRACT
In terms of secure shelter, as well as familial care and affection (two of the more intangible elements contained in a broader notion of `home'), the young people in this pathway were far `less' homeless than those in both the on the streets and using the system pathways. At the time of their interviews, all six in this pathway were either living back in their family home or in a privately rented shared house. Yet the unresolved nature of many of the issues that originally led them into homelessness made their current accommodation situations unstable and suggested that future homelessness was a distinct possibility. Despite being privately accommodated, the young people in the in and out of home pathway shared more in common with those in the on the streets pathway than with those in the servicebased one. The characteristic that the young people in these pathways shared and which distinguished them from their contemporaries in the using the system pathway was their ongoing dependence on drugs. Whether safely housed or living on the streets, young people who are drug dependent are less stable and more vulnerable than those who are not. This single factor has ¯ow-on effects in other important areas of their lives (education, employment, mental and general health, relationships, involvement in criminal activity, etc.) and renders whatever accommodation arrangements they may have as more provisional.1
