Housing Insecurity and Sexual Victimization: A Scoping Review of Conceptualizations, Mechanisms, and Gaps

Introduction/Purpose:

Sexual violence (SV) affects approximately 25% of women and 10% of men in the United States in their lifetime. While SV happens across social groups, individuals experiencing poverty and material deprivation face disproportionately elevated risk. Housing insecurity (HI) has been identified as one of the critical risk factors. However, despite growing empirical attention to this association, a coherent theoretical framework explaining the mechanisms through which HI elevates SV risk has not yet been established. This scoping review examines how existing literature operationalizes and theorizes the HI-SV relationship, with a focus on adults in North American contexts, given distinct pathways in child sexual abuse and substantial cross-national variation in public safety infrastructure.

Methods:

We conducted a scoping review using Arksey and O'Malley’s framework and PRISMA-ScR guidelines. This study systematically searched the literature on HI and SV across three databases: Web of Science, PubMed, and PsycINFO. After identifying 2,301 records, 1,275 unique articles remained after deduplication, and 37 papers were selected through title and abstract screening by two researchers, with 15 studies included after full-text screening. The inclusion criteria were empirical studies in North America that treated HI as an exposure and SV as an outcome. Information such as the definitions and measurements of HI and SV, mechanisms linking the two concepts, theoretical frameworks, study populations, and research designs was systematically charted from the final included studies, and the conceptual structure of how HI explains SV was inductively identified through a thematic synthesis.

Results:

Of the 15 included studies, most focused on women (n=7) and transgender or gender-diverse individuals (n=3). The majority (n=9) conceptualized HI narrowly as homelessness, leaving cumulative and processual impacts of less visible forms, such as rent arrears, eviction, and temporary residence, largely unexplored. SV was operationalized across multiple domains, including non-partner SV, partner SV, trafficking, and survival sex. Regarding theoretical frameworks, many studies drew on intersectionality and ecological frameworks to contextualize HI–SV association, but few specified mechanisms connecting HI to increased SV risk beyond intersecting vulnerabilities. Some qualitative studies drew on routine activity theory, emphasizing elevated exposure to risk among individuals experiencing HI, but modeling HI alongside co-occurring risks (e.g., substance use, mental illness) limits isolation of its independent pathway to SV.

Conclusions:

This scoping review reveals that, while the empirical evidence on the relationship between HI and SV is growing, the conceptualization of HI across studies is heterogeneous and disproportionately anchored to homelessness. More importantly, this review finds that the theoretical gap identified at the outset persists across the existing literature. Although some studies partially draw on lifestyle-exposure theory or routine activities theory, no integrated theoretical framework consistently explains HI→SV as a structural mechanism. Future research should require (1) conceptualize HI as a cumulative and dynamic process rather than a single state, (2) isolate the independent pathway from HI to SV by treating HI as the primary exposure rather than one among many co-occurring risk factors, and (3) develop an integrated theoretical framework that moves beyond intersecting vulnerabilities to explain HI->SV as a consistent structural mechanism.