Houses and homelessness
The demand takes advantage of homelessness.

from The Demand Factor: Buying Despair
Woodcuts, etchings, and collages by Myrna Balk

The Demand Factor

• Prostituted women
• Empty Playgrounds
• Mail Order Brides
• Sex Tourism
• Moving Around
• Houses/ homelessness
• Pimps
• The Demands of Men

Houses are a metaphor for safety, warmth and security. Some houses also contain domestic violence, cruelty, incest, and pain. The reverse of houses, or homes, is homelessness. When a girl runs away from home, or a women runs from an abuser, she often becomes homeless.

We know from stories of runaway girls and women who are homeless that they are especially vulnerable to being befriended and recruited by a pimp. In their film "Childhood Lost" the Youth Agency Prostitution Task Force in Minnesota states that on any given night there are 600 teens that are homeless. There are shelters for only 300. Thus we might conclude that 300 teens are vulnerable to being seduced by pimps who offer shelter.

When a women exchanges sex for food shelter or clothing, it is called survival sex.

Homelessness, incest and poverty are factors that lead to prostitution. 92% of the women who want to leave being prostituted say they cannot, because they lack housing.

("Childhood Lost", Youth Agency Prostitution Task Force)