The Link Between Homelessness and Sex Trafficking

By Collin Cunningham

Last year there were more than 10,000 Ohioans experiencing homelessness on any given night. While vagrancy is a major state issue by itself, it can be symptomatic of larger problems considering the undeniable link between homelessness and human trafficking, especially in young people.

“About four percent of all youths are engaging in survival sex or sex trafficking, but for youth that are on the streets that number increases to 28%,” explained Melissa Humbert-Washington, youth initiate coordinator at the Coalition on Homelessness and Housing in Ohio (COHHIO). Here, she cited an article by an advocacy group called the National Runaway Safeline.

According to Shannon Ricchiuti, who works as a forensic interviewer at the Children’s Center of Media County, there are several factors that connect the status of homelessness and the crime of sex trafficking.

“One could be, maybe they’re not getting the attention that they need or want from home life. I think the population that comes from that is runaways, and most likely they’re teens and they have a very high chance of falling victim to human trafficking when they’re running away.”

Homeless individuals are much harder to track down. They often don’t have a family or friends who will miss them if they’re away for long periods of time. They could be trafficked out of the same place or different locations for weeks and nobody would notice.

Humbert-Washington said a person’s status as a minor adds an extra wrinkle of difficulty to the equation, and that an individual might choose to leave home before they’re 18 for many reasons.

“40% of the youth who are homeless identify as LGBTQ so they’ve cited in-acceptance in their own family as leaving home and not having a safe place to stay anymore.”

Homelessness remains prevalent in Ohio in part because of the growing gap between wages and the price of rent. According to an assessment release from COHHIO, the state’s housing wage has increased to $15.25 in 2018, meaning that renters need to earn at least $15 an hour at their job to continue living at even a smaller house or apartment.

“The shortage of affordable housing is growing, between people’s stagnant wages, especially for people on the lower end of the income scale,” said Marcus Roth, the director of communications and development at COHHIO. “There’s now 400,000 Ohioans who spend over half of their income on rent, and when you look at the most common jobs in Ohio, only two of the ten most common actually pay enough of a wage for someone to be able to afford a basic 2-bedroom apartment.”

While the issues of homelessness and sex trafficking are clearly connected, perhaps it would be easier to deal with one before the other rather than trying to tackle both at the same time. Humbert-Washington and Ricchiuti agree that homelessness is the root cause of many of these scenarios.

“I would say from a housing perspective if people have a stable place to call their own, it’s a lot less likely that they’re going to have to turn to sex trafficking or survival sex because (they) need to be able to get their basic needs met,” Humbert-Washington said.

Ohio may have the fourth-highest rate of human trafficking crimes in the country, but the Buckeye State manages to keep a better hold over homelessness, even if 10,000 sounds like a high number. The Department of Housing & Urban Development’s Annual Homeless Assessment reports that Ohio experienced a 27.8% decrease in total homeless population between 2012 and 2017.

“We certainly have a lot more homeless people than very small states with very low populations, but we don’t have as many homeless people as states like California or New York,” Humbert-Washington said.

Thankfully, there are advocacy groups like COHHIO and institutions like the Children’s Center of Medina that help adolescents and adults avoid the risk of sex trafficking, homelessness, or a mixture of the two.

“A lot of what we do here at COHHIO is try to coordinate all the different agencies at the local level that are working on issues of homelessness and affordable housing,” Roth said. 

 

Feature image credit: Pixabay