How Different the Life Looks like Between the Urban and Rural Homeless in Taiwan?

Background/purpose: The number of homeless population in Taiwan has been doubled up since 2004. The growing trend is a result of rapid economic downturn and drastic increase in housing price for the past decade. An urgent need for the government in Taiwan for taking a proactive approach to allocating resources to the homeless has been called for. Homelessness issue in Taiwan has been long considered as an urban issue involving people living roofless in the streets during night time. However, in contrast, the rural homeless are less visible physically than the urban ones which limits them for taking advantage of services provision by the government. This paper intends to present how different the living conditions and services access look like between the urban and rural homeless people.

Methods: Two hundred fifty-eight homeless were recruited from the streets and were face-to-face interviewed at homeless service centers using a structured questionnaire. Among them, seventy-six percent of interviewees were from five metropolitan cities in Taiwan, and the other 24% were from the rural areas. Bivariate statistical analysis was used to describe how different the living conditions and resources access between the urban and rural homeless were. And multivariate statistical analysis was used to compare the pattern of how living conditions and resources access would impact the frequency of their staying homeless between the urban and rural interviewees.

Results: In comparison, the rural group looked slightly older than their counter-partners. However, a significant proportion of the rural homeless were previously married in this survey, when compared to the urban group. And, more rural homeless indicated more positive answers than the urban ones

Looking into their living conditions, the rural homeless were more likely live in the streets almost every day than the urban homeless. Some urban homeless live in the streets from time to time, discontinuously, but the rural homeless interviewed were more likely to live in indoor spaces, such as abandoned houses, insecure houses, temples, double up with friends, shelters, etc. And the majority of the urban homeless would sleep in the outdoor spaces, such as public parks, livestock markets, train stations, etc. In terms of unemployment, the rural homeless were more likely to be unemployed than the urban homeless. Inevitably, they then earned much less than the urban partners. Even worse, due to thin services provision system in the rural cities, the homeless here received less needy services than the urban ones, for example, meals, clothing, cleaning, medical care, shelters, etc.

Multivariate statistical analysis showed a different pattern of dynamic factors predicting the frequency of staying homeless. Comparing the urban group, the rural homeless who live in the streets almost every day were those who were less likely to access service provisions and had less earned income.

Implications: Overall results indicated that the living conditions and access to service provisions were different between the urban and rural homeless. Policy and service provisions should address the different living conditions and needy services the two groups indicated in this study.