ABSTRACT
Youth homelessness hit the headlines in 1989. Over the next few years it was a popular subject in the broadsheet and tabloid press. Images of young people sleeping rough on the streets of London were common, particularly in the Sunday press. Youth homelessness featured in women’s magazines and the subject matter lent itself to a number of television drama documentaries. This chapter traces the media career of youth homelessness—the way it entered the headlines and, later, how the reporting changed. However, before looking in more detail at this, the question needs to be answered: why, in a book about environmental risk, is an analysis of youth homelessness relevant? The main answer is that an analysis of social issues and the media has much to tell us about environmental issues and the media. The boundaries between ‘social’ and the ‘natural’ environments are porous. For example, it is obvious that political decisions over the distribution of economic and social resources are intricately connected with political decisions over natural resources. Broadly, what a society does with its people is likely to reflect what it does with its natural environment. Policies, be they environmental, economic or welfare, can produce a fall out. In youth homelessness this resulting ‘pollution’ is essentially social or human.
