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In this study we observe the wanderings of young people, between 18 and 29 years old, in the urban area of Lille. The analysis is based on comparison with a panel group of young people coming from a working class background who managed to avoid homelessness. The aim of the study was to examine the intelligibility of being homeless based on the dialectical deconstruction of private and public space, being between two extreme positions: private space reduced to accommodation as its basic instrumental function loses its reality and drives young people towards facing an unmediated public space; the loss of control of public space results in sociability splitting away from the place where it develops. The birth of a child creates the dilemma for parents of either having the child taken from them or leaving the street. The disorientation in which these young people live provokes in them the fear of a sudden removal from the public space, either into hospital or prison: being homeless results in a continuing attempt to reconstruct the private/public dialectic leading to an extreme form of urban living permanently under construction. The homeless person, caught between these two extremes, chooses a transitory and precarious urban life style which (s)he would like to think of as initiatory.