'On the street' and 'of the street': The daily lives of unhoused youth in Hollywood

Unhoused youth are the most understudied subculture of the homeless and little time has been spent describing their lives on the streets. The few studies that have done so have tended 'to emphasize deviance as the central quality of unhoused youth by focusing mainly on unhoused youth who were particularly deviant and/or on their participation in illicit activities. To correct this, this dissertation, based on two ethnographic projects and in-depth interviews with unhoused youth, delves into an exploration of the daily lives of unhoused youth living on the streets of Hollywood, paying particular attention to the liminal position they often occupy. Part one addresses what street life is like for the newly unhoused youth, as well as the strategies unhoused youth use to survive on the streets. It also outlines the various physiological, psychological, biographic, and interpersonal obstacles unhoused youth face when trying to leave the streets and briefly explores the commonalities among unhoused youth who successfully left the streets. Building off the details of unhoused youth's daily lives presented in part one, part two examinees the fact that unhoused youth often occupy a liminal position in society, participating in both the conventional world of mainstream society and the illicit world of the street. It begins by detailing the ways current typologies do not accurately describe unhoused youth and argues that unhoused youth are more appropriately analyzed using a continuum. Following this, the dissertation addresses the appearances, talk, and activities of unhoused youth that explicitly claim and/or align with an "on the street" identity as well as those that explicitly claim and/or align with an "of the street" identity. Since an unhoused youth's participation in mainstream locations and activities is often contingent, however, on not being recognized as unhoused, it also explores the various strategies they use to conceal their status as such. Then, in order to demonstrate the liminal position that unhoused youth frequently occupy, part two concludes with a series of case studies that highlight the variability in the "on the street" and "of the street" identity claims and alignments of unhoused youth.