Survival sex amongst homeless American teenagers

The phenomenon of homelessness among American children and teenagers is strictly linked, according to this brief documentary, to begging, to the use of drugs, in particular crystal-meth, and to ‘survival sex’. Survival sex is one of the means for homeless teenagers and children to survive on a daily basis. A statistic says that a child will resort to survival sex within 48 hours of becoming homeless, the documentary reports. On top of this, taking drugs becomes a way for them to stay up all night without having to find a place to sleep. According to some interviewees, homeless children are looked at ‘as if they were garbage’ but actually, the director of the Stand Up For Kids project  recalls, ‘this problem will not go away unless people do something’. That is, looking at homeless children as if they were unwanted citizens, will not help them get the support they would actually need.

Talking Drugs decided to publish this story for its value as a document on one specific drug–related reality. Even more so this video was inserted in our project because it helps us raise the question on how sex, gender, age, drugs and social exclusion are interlinked. It is common belief that the use of drugs leads people to commit criminal acts. One could however challenge this view by claiming that once social exclusion has triggered a certain lifestyle, in this case youth homelessness, then drugs become a way to stay up all night, a way to control pain or a way to more easily sell one’s body because other ways for making a living are precluded to the homeless. 

I am here building a hypothesis, which certainly many statistics could challenge. However I believe that it is worth challenging the common view that sees drug-use as a precondition for illegal activity. This documentary seems to show that the opposite takes place as well. One could come into homelessness sober and get out as a drug user. Moreover sex, both in terms of prostitution or rape, becomes another currency of exchange, used by these children for making a living rather than for mere solace. The question then is: how should one tackle the issue of a youth involved in drug-use and prostitution in the context of homelessness, whilst many national laws deem such activities as simply illegal? If these were seen also as problems, which governments and people have the duty to tackle, perhaps the reality of drugs and sexual exploitation would also be understood in a new, socially productive way for the benefit of other contexts as well.