Homelessness

A case study of the Bakhita Gardens Center in Seattle, a housing facility for women. This case study is a part of a collection of reports, databases and design strategies for Design Resources for Homelessness, a free online knowledge source for designing housing and facilities for persons experiencing homelessness.

This paper describes the results of a qualitative study involving interviews with twelve public librarians about their experiences interacting with library users experiencing homelessness. The study examines the kinds of health information seeking experiences public librarians have, how public librarians respond to the health information needs of homeless library users, and the challenges public librarians undergo as they work to provide health and other information services to homeless individuals. The interviews show that public librarians have mixed experiences providing health information to homeless library users. Some viewed health information needs as a top-level concern, while others viewed health information as a lower priority need when compared to housing and food. Public librarians described several challenges when providing information services to homeless individuals related to professional roles, crisis management, the stigma of homelessness, privacy/confidentiality, and the library acting as a day shelter. Identifying the experiences and challenges of public librarians as they assist homeless library users is an initial step in creating more effective modes of providing services to this population.

Ph.d.-afhandlingen er en undersøgelse af hjemfølelse i det moderne samfund. Projektet tager afsæt i en dialogisk eidetisk metode, hvorigennem det bliver det undersøgt, hvad det er at føle sig hjemme, og hvordan denne følelse etableres. Undersøgelserne finder sted ved fortsatte teoretiske og empiriske indkredsninger. I udgangspunktet er afhandlingen tværfaglig og trækker teoretisk og metodisk overvejende på den fænomenologiske tradition, især Edmund Husserls overvejelser om morfologisk vage fænomener, Martin Heideggers forståelse af befindlighed og Otto Friedrich Bollnow ideer om det levede rum. Der bliver også inddraget tilegnelsesteori, især på baggrund af Carl Friedrich Graumanns tanker om appropriation. Dertil kommer inddragelse af Freuds forståelse af uhygge. Empirisk er afhandlingen funderet på feltnoter og dybdeinterviews med personer i to grupper af cases, der henholdsvis skal indfange ordinære og ekstreme erfaringer med at bo. Der er således dels foretaget dybdeinterviews med en række mennesker, der er flyttet for nyligt, dels er der gennemført et feltarbejde, der strækker sig over fem måneder ved et socialt værested for hjemløse og andre socialt udsatte borgere i København. Feltnoter og transskriberede dybdeinterviews er med inspiration fra bl.a. Max van Manen blevet bearbejdet til 48 fænomenologiske beskrivelser, der – med et formmæssigt skønlitterært præg – betoner følelsesinvolverede situationer. Beskrivelserne er efterfølgende og på forskellig vis blevet analyseret og diskuteret, for derved i den eidetiske tradition at fremdrage og fremstille det invariante og væsentlige ved fænomenet. Som forståelsesgrundlag for etablering af hjemfølelse bliver der udviklet en teori, hvor menneskers tilegnelse af omgivelserne opdeles i tre former. Den første angår prægningen af omgivelserne, den anden handler om en tilvænning til omgivelserne, og den tredje giver sig udtryk i en mere eksistentiel forsoning, som rækker udover omgivelserne. Empirisk er det især de to første former for tilegnelse, som bliver belyst. På baggrund af undersøgelserne fremtræder især syv væsentlige træk ved hjemfølelse. Således er hjemfølelse særligt kendetegnende ved: fravær af stress, reduceret opmærksomhed, kontrol over nære omgivelser, frihed fra andres regler, anerkendelse af ens tilstedeværelse, mulighed for tilbagetrækning og brug af personlige ting.

In this Chapter (24), we discuss media discourse and framing of homelessness and whether it reveals utilisation of street journals mainly as tools for raising awareness or for creating income to maintain or augment social reintegration efforts and programs. Despite increased academic research interest on how media sources represent and impact social realities, there is little emphasis on homelessness representations in street newspapers. The Greek economic crisis echoed socioeconomic changes and inequalities in both mainstream and lesser-known
media with various framing representations of homelessness. One Greek journalistic effort born midcrisis was the street paper ‘Schedia’, which merits examining for its popularity and success as a component of the social reintegration program that launched it. Through the lens of our case study on Schedia and drawing mostly on contemporary interdisciplinary approaches from Cultural
Studies and Media Communication, we provide a brief
literature review on ‘homelessness street journalism’ research and explore theoretical interpretations thereof. We then discuss media discourse and framing of homelessness and whether it reveals utilisation of street journals mainly as tools for raising awareness or for creating income to maintain or augment social reintegration efforts and programs. We content-analysed one year of Schedia’s issues and examined instances of both perceived and experienced homelessness representations and causes therein, offering a snapshot of the ways
and extent to which Schedia represents homeless voices. Lastly, through the example of Schedia, the chapter debates whether street media lends itself best as a voice for democratic empowerment of the homeless or as an identity-building intermediary tool for capacitating transformative social reintegration.

Substance abuse among homeless mothers has negative consequences for both the mother and her child. Few researchers have examined the needs of these mothers in order to effectively intervene in their lives. This study uses a qualitative focus group research method to examine the needs of substance abusing homeless mothers recruited from a homeless families' shelter. Twenty eight women were engaged in three focus groups to identify their needs and acceptable intervention components. Content analysis of data revealed five major categories of needs: subsistence, employment, education and information, service, and counseling and connectedness needs. Findings of this study call for a multifaceted intervention approach that targets several areas of need in a coordinated manner.

Background: Among individuals experiencing homelessness, the prevalence of alcohol use disorder is extremely high. Alcohol-related harms are compounded by the use of non-beverage alcohol (NBA; e.g. rubbing alcohol, cooking wine). The dangers of NBA consumption pose significant risks to the individual and to others when consumed in large quantities and when mixed with other substances. The objectives of this paper are to describe the alcohol consumption patterns of individuals experiencing homelessness, identify substance use patterns, psychological stressors, and related harms associated with NBA consumption, and compare NBA consumers to non-NBA consumers in relation to their use of services and perceived barriers to care.; Methods: Using a cross-sectional survey, 150 individuals experiencing homelessness were recruited from Edmonton's inner city and adjoining areas. Frequency, quantity, and volume of alcohol consumption were used to assess patterns of alcohol use in the last 6 months. Descriptive statistics and bivariate analyses were used to compare participants reporting NBA consumption and non-NBA consumption (p ≤ 0.05).; Results: The majority of participants were male (71.3%) and self-identified as Indigenous (74.0%). Overall, 24% (n = 36) reported NBA consumption within the last six months. NBA consumers were older than non-NBA consumers (p = 0.005), reported different perceived living stability (p = 0.022), and had higher psychological distress (p = 0.038). The majority of NBA consumers reported not receiving harm reduction services while also not needing such services (n = 18, 51.4%), which differed from non-NBA consumers (p = 0.003). Structural barriers (e.g. availability, location, cost) were most frequently reported as reasons for unmet harm reduction (60.9%) and hospital care (58.3%) needs, while barriers to skills training (58.5%) and counselling services (53.6%) were mostly motivational (e.g. personal beliefs).; Conclusions: Within such an already marginalized population experiencing homelessness, individuals who consume NBA represent a vulnerable subpopulation who require adapted and distinct health and social services to stabilize and recover. Current harm reduction services are not prepared to effectively assist this group of individuals, and specific treatment programs are rare. Managed alcohol programs are a feasible approach but must be tailored to the specific needs of those who consume NBA, which is especially important for Indigenous people. More comprehensive assessments of NBA consumption are needed for program development and policy recommendations. (

The literature speaks to the importance of employment in the lives of homeless individuals and shows how they can be assisted in job seeking (Long & Amendolia, 2003; Marrone, 2005; Quimby, Drake, & Becker, 2001; Rio, Russell, Dudasik, & Gravino, 1999; Rog & Holupka, 1998; Shaheen, Williams, & Dennis, 2003; Trutko, Barnow, Beck, Min, & Isbell, 1998). Some reports suggest it may be effective and worthwhile to offer employment at the earliest stages of engagement to help people who are homeless develop trust, motivation, and hope (Cook et al., 2001; Min, Wong, & Rothbard, 2004). Practitioners have historically focused on providing people with access to safe and affordable housing and supportive services, usually addressing employment later in the continuum. This practice-oriented report from the field proposes that employment should be offered as early as possible and maintains that facilitating employment is an unrecognized and underutilized practice for preventing and ending homelessness. The paper provides principles, practices, and strategies programs can use to make work a priority.

Le persone in difficoltà, che si rivolgono ai Centri di Ascolto Caritas, hanno caratteristiche, bisogni e necessità molteplici e diversificate. Si incontrano individui senza dimora, ma spesso dal grado di istruzione elevato, insieme a persone povere di relazioni, sradicate dalla famiglia, o che hanno ceduto difronte a una società esclusiva.  Comprendere, classificare e studiare le necessità di queste persone può aiutare gli operatori e i responsabili dei centri di assistenza a pianificare le loro azioni, e a gestire meglio il loro lavoro.

Homeless people, social exclusion and John Milbank on Charity.

In this paper I want to address two issues.  The first is that homeless people are ‘socially excluded’; marginal to mainstream society and in need of transformation or re-integration. The second is the common presumption that this is an incorporation that charities, to various degrees, can engender. For ‘Third-Way’ and ‘Big Society’ one can now read ‘Blue Labour’ and ‘Red Tory’, all of which endorse the charitable sphere as an emancipatory zone.

Using the work of the theologian John Milbank I will contend that both the obviousness of charitable solutions and the presumed location of homeless people (excluded) stem from a common root - a widespread social imaginary, or social topography - that envisions our society as fundamentally riven by difference. In short: political atomism. This modern account of public space, which Milbank describes as ‘univocal’ or ‘secular’ (and I will briefly outline), sources and sustains the organisation of our bodies (the hard working and home buying subject vs feckless and idle degenerate) and gives coherence to our altruistic proclivities and activities.

However as the paper progresses I will also suggest that this topography has its aporias. Firstly, construing homeless people as ‘excluded’ fails to account for the way homeless people are utilised as a way of defining those in the center. In an analogous fashion altrusim, I will contend, needs poverty as the occasion of its demonstration. In both cases the homeless are not external but overdetermined; not too far, but too close.

Herausgeber_innen: Emily Kelling, Dagmar Pelger, Martina Löw, Jörg Stollmann

Technische Universität Berlin, Fachgebiet Planungs- und Architektursoziologie & Fachgebiet Städtebau und Urbanisierung
archsoz.tu-berlin.de
cud.tu-berlin.de

Die vorliegende Arbeit gründet auf den Ergebnissen der Lehrveranstaltung „Spatial Commons 6: Wohnhaft im Verborgenen. Codes & Conventions der Hostelwirtschaft in Berlin“, ein soziologisches Urban Design Projekt als Recherche- und Kartierungsstudio am Fachgebiet Planungs- und Architektursoziologie in Kooperation mit dem Fachgebiet Städtebau und Urbanisierung, TU Berlin, Wintersemester 2017/2018.

Studierende: Flavia Biianu, Edda Brandes, Pauline Bruckner, Almar de Ruiter, Valentin Dobrun, Finya Eichhorst, Stefan File, Anne Gunia, Christopher Heidecke, Dariya Kryshen, Farina Runge, Alina Schütze, Lisa Wagner, Jonas Wulf

Have an enjoyable, rewarding, and restorative 2019! Please feel free to share this newsletter with others. Produced as part of the Participation in Everyday Life Research Group Going from strength to strength On behalf of the team at University of Plymouth I wish you all the very best for 2019. In this, our third newsletter, I have the pleasure of reflecting upon how the Participation in Everyday Life group, which is rooted in occupational science, is going from strength to strength. We had three PhDs graduate at this year's graduation ceremony; they explored occupational science from the perspective of older people, tenancy sustainment and outdoor adventure. We continue to thrive and grow because of our collaborations. As well as our colleagues in other disciplines at the University of Plymouth, we work with researchers at

In this paper, I explore the complexity and difficulty of defining homelessness and I expose some methodological issues that must be considered by the researchers in this field study. I also question the access to the field and the "alteration" of data by the presence of researchers. Finally, I expose some marginal and relatively new qualitative research methods that could be taken to account in this field such as spatial and visual methods.

Bread Givers (1925) by Anzia Yezierska and The Bluest Eye (1970) by Toni Morrison reveal the tension between self and society where ethnic women struggle with patriarchal borders to find a space, authority, and identity of their own. The central dilemma in both of the novels is how individuality and freedom can coexist where there are attachments to the spaces and communities one lives in. With the consideration of additional factors such as ethnicity, gender, class, and labor the female protagonists explore and question their American ethnic and racial identity in the novels which can be seen as a predecessor of the Civil Rights Movement. These diverse ethnicities and races have impacted and shaped the American literary and cultural contexts; leading to a redefinition of the original European form Bildungsroman. Yezierskàs and Morrison`s Jewish and Black female characters, are largely excluded from gaining power and authority due to racial discrimination, illiteracy, poverty, inequality, and patriarchal norms. At the same time these novels, unearth the multiple layers of repressed memories and forgotten stories of African and Jewish-American women in private and public labor. In both of the novels the familiar domestic sphere " home " which is associated with security and peace, turns into an alien, unknown, and in-between space where women feel isolation and homelessness within the household itself. The most familiar environments for women: the home and the family are questioned and multiple versions of oppression, isolation, and power struggles in the lives of African American and Jewish American women are exposed.

Little research has been conducted to investigate the needs and challenges of homeless individuals living in FM. In this paper, the social determinant of health that exacerbated homelessness in Fort McMurray, Canada, were highlighted. The study implemented a participatory action research design. In-depth open-ended life history interviews were conducted individually with 15 participant which were experiencing homelessness at the time of the study. Common threads were identified across shared experiences embedded within the broad social, cultural, and institutional macro system. These adults face difficult daily challenges including finding adequate and affordable housing and food, securing a safe place to sleep, overcoming addictions and consequently avoiding the rampant availability of drugs and alcohol. Many of FM's homeless also deal with job loss, physical and mental health problems, dangerous environments, and traumatic histories of hardship. Many have been exposed to histo...

Given the scarcity of methodological reflections by geographers studying homelessness, and drawing from ethnographic research in Athens, this article provides an empirical reflexive account of the complexities of practising homelessness research through ‘spaces of care’. Emphasising the institutional nature of these spaces, it highlights the role of institutions, such as NGOs and public authorities, in shaping certain local contexts for geographic research. Precisely, the circulation of specific homeless-related discourses throughout spaces of care shapes the ‘viscous field’ of institutions, wherein research moves become difficult and subject positionings are set a priori. Therein, the twofaced figure of Janus becomes the metaphor for the geographer in the viscous field, who embodies simultaneously two faces-roles: of researcher and volunteer. Afterwards, a focus on bodies highlights the emotional and performative aspects of the encounters with research participants. Eventually, four-plus-one ethical pro-positions for practising geographic research on homelessness are given in place of conclusions. Overall, the article is an empirical contribution to institutional geographies, their methodologies, and the difficulties, complexities and negotiations for researchers-volunteers. For the ‘trouble of institutions’ may also be a methodological trouble for geography practitioners in research sites such as spaces of care, where researchers-volunteers, participants and institutions become entangled with one another.

This paper, through an exploration of the phenomenon of panhandling in Tampa, Florida, and a set of policies that have further marginalized people precariously poised at the outer reaches of community, explores a theoretical framework for understanding the processes of community and precarity. The recent explosion of theories from the field of precarity both deepen the analysis and offer a means of conceptualizing the accretive tendency of the perceived interior and its diffusion in a precarious labor economy, so that the margins and the center are collapsing upon themselves. The aim of this work is to seek an understanding of community, politics and precarity, pulling from the work of Neilson and Rossiter, Isabell Lorey, Judith Butler and Guy Standing. Moreover, this work seeks to offer a means of understanding panhandling as a contingent phenomenon, a manifestation of the current, precarious social, political, cultural moment.

The scale of homelessness in Europe throws a stark light on the right to housing that exists in many European states and in European and International Law. This disparity between legal right and the social reality of homelessness and housing precarity begs the question as to the efficacy of a rights-based approach to housing.

This article examines the ‘enforceable’ right to housing in France, in place since 2007, to explore the efficacy of approaching a chronic lack of housing through justiciable rights. The lack of progress in over a decade of jurisprudence highlights the challenges posed to legal advocacy in this area, particularly when combined with a lack of political will. The article concludes by reflecting on alternative approaches, in which justiciable rights have played less of a role, stressing the need for political and financial commitment over legal rights.

Although planned as the " City of Tomorrow " , the Bijlmer district in Amsterdam quickly became the quintessential symbol of urban decline. Today, even with half of the planned renewal of the Bijlmer completed, the alleged success of this urban revitalisation programme is questionable. Parts of the black middle class did not move out and some are even returning to the Bijlmer; the combination is producing a type of " black gentrification " , which forces the " undesirables " like drug users, homeless people and undocumented immigrants to leave. This revanchist renewal not only benefits the middle and lower-class population of the district, but it also serves the interests of private developers. European revanchism makes the city safe for corporate investment and aims to restore social order as well as stimulating the development of a strong middle class. This paper demonstrates how hard revanchist policies are demanded not only by private developers but also by the middle and lower classes, and they exist alongside soft " caring " policies, even for the " undesirables " . 
Keywords: revanchism, urban revitalisation, gentrification, Amsterdam, black middle class, homeless people, modernist urban planning, undesirables, drug use, public space, high-rise flats