Homelessness and Housing

The latest Australian Homelessness Monitor shows the national homelessness rate is set to surge as short-term coronavirus and housing protections phase down.
The 2020 Australian Homelessness Monitor offers an independent analysis of homelessness in Australia. It investigates the changing scale and nature of the problem, and assesses recent policy and practice developments seen in response.
This is the second in the Launch Housing-commissioned Monitor series, conducted by the University of New South Wales (City Futures Research Centre and the Centre for Social Impact) and the University of Queensland.

Data visualisation can be found here: unsw.to/AHM2020

This is a case study review of the Booth Centre, a Salvation Army supportive housing project in Southampton, United Kingdom. The review focuses on the site's attendance to human wellness. The case study is one of a collection of such case studies by Design Resources for Homelessness at designresourcesforhomelessness.org

Περίληψη

Το άρθρο διερευνά με ημι-δομημένες συνεντεύξεις τα αίτια απώλειας στέγης Ελλήνων αστέγων παραγωγικής ηλικίας στην περιοχή της Αθήνας. Έπειτα από την επισκόπηση των κυριότερων παραγόντων που ευνοούν την εμφάνιση φαινομένων απώλειας στέγης στη διεθνή βιβλιογραφία περιγράφεται η μεθοδολογία που ακολουθήθηκε, καθώς και τα αποτελέσματα της εμπειρικής έρευνας και τα συμπεράσματα. Μέσα από το εμπειρικό σκέλος προκύπτει η επικράτηση δομικών και θεσμικών παραγόντων απώλειας στέγης. Γεγονός που σε μεγάλο βαθμό οφείλεται στις δυσμενείς επιπτώσεις της κρίσης, των πολιτικών λιτότητας που εφαρμόστηκαν, της επιδείνωσης ακραίων μορφών φτώχειας και κοινωνικού αποκλεισμού και των θεσμικών αναδιαρθρώσεων της κοινωνικής πολιτικής.

Λέξεις Κλειδιά: Απώλεια Στέγης, Κοινωνικός Αποκλεισμός, Κρίση, Ελλάδα

Abstract

Using semi-structured interviews, this article delves into the causes of homelessness for homeless people of working age in Athens. The extensive literature review of the main factors contributing to the emergence of homelessness is followed by the presentation of the methodology utilized, the research findings and conclusions. The empirical part shows how structural and institutional factors account for homelessness. This is largely due to the adverse effects of the crisis, the austerity policies implemented, the deterioration of extreme forms of poverty and social exclusion, as well as the institutional restructuring (transformation) of social policy (changes in social policy institutions). 

Keywords: Homelessness, Social Exclusion, Crisis, Greece

Περίληψη

Το άρθρο χρησιμοποιεί την έννοια του «μίγματος ευημερίας» (welfare mix) ως βασικό ερμηνευτικό εργαλείο, επιχειρώντας να εξετάσει την αναλογία του στις πολιτικές αντιμετώπισης της έλλειψης στέγης στην Ελλάδα. Οι αλλαγές στο μίγμα ευημερίας οδηγούν σε νέους τύπους διακυβέρνησης. Σε αυτό το πλαίσιο, η οπισθοχώρηση του κράτους επιχειρείται να αναπληρωθεί από την κοινωνία των πολιτών και τον ιδιωτικό τομέα. Στην Ελλάδα, στα χρόνια της κρίσης, η ανάδυση των πολιτικών για την έλλειψη στέγης φαίνεται να ακολουθεί αυτά ακριβώς τα μονοπάτια. ΜΚΟ, φιλανθρωπικά ιδρύματα και ιδιωτικές επιχειρήσεις πρωταγωνιστούν στην προσφορά ευημερίας, εξαιτίας της μη παρέμβασης του κράτους. Γεγονός που έχει εμφανή αρνητικό αντίκτυπο στην ποιότητα της κοινωνικής προστασίας των αστέγων.

Λέξεις Κλειδιά: Μίγμα Ευημερίας, Κοινωνική Πολιτική, Έλλειψη Στέγης, Ελλάδα

Abstract

The article uses the concept of "welfare mix" as the main interpretive tool, attempting to examine its ratio to the policies addressing homelessness in Greece. Changes in the welfare mix, lead to new modes of governance. In this context, the retreat of the state is attempted to be made up by the civil society as well as the private sector. In Greece, during the years of crisis, the emergence of homelessness policies seems to follow these exact paths. NGOs, charities and private companies play the leading role in welfare bid, because of the non-intervention of the state. This fact has an obvious negative impact on the quality of the social protection of the homeless.

Keywords: welfare mix, social policy, homelessness, Greece

Existing research on lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) youth homelessness identifies family rejection as a main pathway into homelessness for the youth. This finding, however, can depict people of color or poor people as more prejudiced than White, middle-class families. In this 18-month ethnographic study, the author complicates this rejection paradigm through documenting the narratives of 40 LGBTQ youth experiencing homelessness. The author examines how poverty and family instability shaped the conditions that the youth perceived as their being rejected because of their gender and sexuality. This rejection generated strained familial ties within families wherein the ties were already fragile. Likewise, the author shows how being gender expansive marked many youth's experiences of familial abuse and strain. This study proposes the concept of conditional families to capture the social processes of how poverty and family instability shape experiences of gender, sexuality, and rejection for some LGBTQ youth.

This research focuses on the effectiveness of the Destitute Persons Act 1977 in protecting the right of the destitute persons in Malaysia. Hence, it is the aim of this research is to study the effectiveness of the Destitute Persons Act 1977 in protecting the right of destitute person as well as to analyze the legal position regarding the right and liberty of homeless people under the Destitute Persons Act 1977. To achieve this aim, this research has analysed various laws, theories and principles underpinning the right of destitute person as well as comparative analysis between the law in Malaysia and Scotland in dealing with homelessness .This research also provides a set of recommendation to ensure that the right of the destitute person is well protected as well as to provide an alternative solution for the government in dealing with the problem of homelessness.

A building construction project is a high risk activity which must be managed effectively in all stages, in order to avoid delays and cost overruns, which in most cases are part of it, and a common problem. These problems occur frequently during project lifetime leading to disputes and litigation. There are numerous factors causing delays and cost overrun in building construction projects, and in order to mitigate these causes; the study aimed at identifying the mitigation measures in dealing with delay and cost overrun in public building project in DarEs -Salaam, Tanzania. This research presents a list of construction delay and cost overrun causes and mitigation retrieved from literature. The feedback from building construction experts was obtained through questionnaires. Subsequently, a questionnaire containing list of construction delays and cost overrun mitigations retrieved from literature was prepared. The questionnaire survey was distributed to 75 building construction experts, from the clients, consultants, and contractor's organizations side. Out of 75 distributed questionnaires, only 49 were returned. The data were analysed using Microsoft excel and ranked according to mean score for contractor, consultant and client. The general response from both parties were analysed, high scored factors were discussed. Effective project planning and scheduling; design change should be controlled; effective coordination and communication between parties; client, promptly paying the parties progressively; having accurate cost estimates; appoint competent site and project manager; comprehensive contract administration; ensuring prompt resolution in design change queries, issues and authorization report; efficient and effective planning time schedule for material procurement delivery process; developing effective strategic planning for solving identified risks; and ensuring on the timely availability of finance; were identified as the most effective mitigation measures in dealing with delay and cost overrun in public building project, due to having a mean score above 4.00.

This chapter critically addresses the historicity of the refiguration of spaces by confronting the “increasing mobility” hypothesis of the “refiguration of spaces” approach with the increase of homelessness in São Paulo from the 1980s. I apply a particular dialectical-cum-phenomenological methodology to the historicity implicit in patterns of the spatialization of bodily and materially mediated (non-)verbal interaction. By focusing on specific homeless pedestrians in São Paulo’s pre-COVID-19 downtown streets and squares, I depict what the underlying historicity model discloses about the production of public space in the city. These homeless pedestrians stand out due to their physical immobility therein on workdays amid their own mobility and the mobility of other pedestrians. Hence, what comes to the conceptual forefront is a historically at the very least bitemporal process of dialectical space (re)production. This model transcends the multilinear acceleration that implicitly underpins the refiguration of space and signals three contributions of this chapter to expanding the empirical plausibility of the “refiguration of spaces” approach.

Homelessness is a persistent problem facing offenders returning to the community from prison. Many offenders were homeless prior to incarceration, and often return to homelessness after release. Additionally, the costs of incarceration have led policy-makers to consider large-scale alternatives to rapidly and effectively reduce correctional costs. The Washington State Department of Corrections’ Housing Voucher Program (HVP) is a reentry program that seeks to divert offenders from homelessness by paying for returning offenders’ rent expenses in private housing for up to three months following their release. The current study provides an impact evaluation and cost assessment of HVP. Findings demonstrate support for the program and indicate dramatic reductions in associated correctional costs.

This presentation that explores First Nations and Aboriginal homelessness trends in Canada was one of five presentations to officially launch the Canadian Observatory on Homelessness (COH). The COH builds on the work of the Canadian Homelessness Research Network (CHRN) and introduces a program of research that includes local, provincial and national monitoring activities, as well as original research that addresses key issues in homelessness. COH includes researchers, service providers, policy and decision makers, people with lived experience of homelessness as well as graduate and undergraduate students from across Canada with a passion for social justice issues and a desire to solve homelessness in our communities.

Shelter is one of the basic needs for civilization. With increasing population, lack of social services, joblessness, poor income, increasing price of real estate and lack of affordable shelters we see an increase in numbers of the homeless people in the street. The prediction for the foreseeable world economic future is gloomy, meaning that we may see more homelessness and a further increase in crime rates as an effect. Everybody has the right to be fed, clothed, and treated with respect and dignity without being judged for their looks, mistakes, or choices in life, thus it is important to find a way to resolve the issue of homelessness. Thus there is a great need to find an affordable, long lasting resolution to this issue.

This study examined the experiences that lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, questioning, and 2-Spirit (LGBTQ2S) homeless youth have in shelters and the disjunctures that occur for this population in Toronto’s shelter system. The attitudes and behaviours of shelter workers and management towards LGBTQ2S youth were also explored. A Critical Action Research approach, informed by Critical Ethnography and Institutional Ethnography was employed. Thirty-three people participated in this study in the Greater Toronto Area. The study triangulated data from interviews, focus groups, observations and document analysis. The systemic enactment of homophobia, transphobia, and hegemonic masculinity are often normalized in shelters, and create significant barriers to safe, accessible, and supportive services for LGBTQ2S youth. Excessive bureaucratic regulation and the lack of necessary bureaucratic regulation in highly significant areas play a key role in creating the disjunctures that occur for LGBTQ2S youth in shelters.

In the past few years, an increased number of local governments have tried to implement policies that resolve to end homelessness by making the homeless invisible. On the other hand, there are also many city governments who have implemented other means of ending homelessness, by addressing the fundamental deficiency of adequate, affordable housing and planned services. One solution addresses the demands of business – blaming the homeless for lost revenue. The other addresses the needs of the people – recognizing the inequity thrust upon becoming and being homeless. Whose methods and policies are most effective and why?

Wie soll man Wohnalternativen für obdachlose Menschen planen, wenn man berücksichtigt, dass das Wohnen auf der Straße (street dwelling) weltweit zu einem bestim- menden Merkmal der Produktion von städtischem Raum geworden ist? Ziel des vorliegenden Essays ist, diese Frage zu beantworten, indem ich aufzeige, dass Archi- tekt*innen im Hinblick auf evidenzbasierte Wohnbau- projekte zu Obdachlosigkeit eine Vielzahl von Anregungen daraus beziehen können, wie obdachlose Menschen den Straßenraum während ihres Alltags dort symbolisch darstellen. Präziser ausgedrückt: Die alltäglichen sozialen Anordnungen – das heißt, Räumlichkeiten – der Straße durch obdachlose Menschen bergen relevante program- matische Herausforderungen für Architekt*innen.

The homelessness is defined differently by various experts. The case study is intended to present homeless people as a class of people without conventional housing, internally based on a relational concept shaped largely by a symphatetic social network that connects these people and offers them a survival adaptation mechanism in a given life situation. Study is based on homeless shelter ethnographic research executed throughout the years 2017-2019 in a position of social worker assistant in Czech Republic. It is a product of engaged anthropology with its role of presenting negatively effecting situations as a way of adjustment to special homeless situation of a person, supported by adequate quotations of homeless people in each chapter. The aim of the study is to describe the so-called dependency on a shelter viewed by the major society and social services within the terms of creating of an essential alternative home.

This proposal for a cost-benefit analysis, designed as part of an assignment for a social policy analysis class, presents a hypothetical research design to determine whether the Housing First or Continuum of Care model of mitigating urban homelessness is more cost-effective for the state of Michigan.

Le statistiche ci dicono che le persone senza fissa dimora sono prevalentemente uomini. Per ogni nove uomini che vivono per strada, c'è una donna che condivide questa stessa condizione, anche se il fenomeno riguarda un numero sempre maggiore. Ma chi sono le donne che si trovano oggi a vivere senza una casa? Che età hanno, che lingua parlano? La curiosità sorge innanzitutto perché sono molto meno visibili degli uomini; durante la stagione fredda, per fortuna, non se ne incontrano proprio. Una breve incursione nella realtà dei dormitori, a contatto con gli operatori del Servizio mobile dell'associazione Amici di Piazza Grande, aiuta a capire quali e quante sono le nuove figure di donne senza fissa dimora.

The paper aims to add to the understanding of homelessness by exploring and analysing the homeless pathway of a young expectant mother as she negotiates her way through temporary accommodation and comes to terms with her circumstances and new identity as a person without a home. A phenomenological interviewing approach was used in order to gain insights into the subject’s lived daily world from their perspective. Themes were then identified that encapsulated the essential qualities of the interview. The stress and negative emotions of being homeless appear to be accentuated significantly due to pregnancy, taking the potential for the positive feelings associated with pregnancy away from the participant. Structural factors such as the homelessness legislation and affordable housing supply had a strong influence over her homeless pathway, resulting in feelings of a loss of control over her destiny and choices and subsequent feelings of low self-worth, which she had to try to come to terms with. However, the pregnancy was also used as a positive coping strategy, as was family support. Minimal research has been undertaken on the experiences of homeless women who are pregnant. The results point to the need to understand the deeply negative impacts that homelessness can have on individuals, particularly expectant mothers. The value of examining homelessness as a pathway is also shown.

Περίληψη

Το κείμενο εργασίας επιχειρεί να διερευνήσει με ημι-δομημένες συνεντεύξεις το πλαίσιο σχεδιασμού και υλοποίησης του Προγράμματος ‘Στέγαση και Επανένταξη’, καθώς και την επίδραση του στη φιλοσοφία των πολιτικών αντιμετώπισης της έλλειψης στέγης στην Ελλάδα. Έπειτα από την παράθεση των βασικότερων προσεγγίσεων στεγαστικής υποστήριξης, επιχειρείται η αντιστοίχηση τους με την φυσιογνωμία των ελληνικών πολιτικών με επίκεντρο τις μεταβολές που επιφέρει το ‘Στέγαση και Επανένταξη’. Στο εμπειρικό μέρος επιδιώκεται η αποτίμηση της πιλοτικής εφαρμογής του Προγράμματος, καθώς και η ευρύτερη επίδραση του στα χαρακτηριστικά των κοινωνικών πολιτικών για τους άστεγους. Διαπιστώνεται ότι, παρά τις επιμέρους παραλείψεις και ασάφειες, πρόκειται για την πρώτη ολιστική παρέμβαση του ελληνικού κράτους για την αντιμετώπιση του συγκεκριμένου κοινωνικού προβλήματος.

Λέξεις Κλειδιά: Άστεγοι, Στέγαση και Επανένταξη, Κοινωνική Πολιτική, Ελλάδα, Κρίση

Περίληψη

Το άρθρο διερευνά τη σχέση μεταξύ των ευρύτερων χαρακτηριστικών της δομής των καθεστώτων ευημερίας με το φαινόμενο της έλλειψης στέγης. Για την επίτευξη αυτού του στόχου, στο πρώτο μέρος επιχειρείται μια επισκόπηση της βιβλιογραφίας περί καθεστώτων ευημερίας και της σύνδεσής τους με το φαινόμενο της έλλειψης στέγης. Το δεύτερο μέρος περιλαμβάνει την εμπειρική διερεύνηση, η οποία διενεργείται με τη συγκριτική ανάλυση πρωτογενών στατιστικών δεδομένων και την ποιοτική επεξεργασία εκθέσεων και κειμένων που αναφέρονται σε εθνικές στρατηγικές για την έλλειψη στέγης σε έξι χώρες εκπροσώπους των καθεστώτων ευημερίας. Το βασικό συμπέρασμα που προκύπτει από την ανάλυση είναι ότι οι δυσκολίες απόδειξης μιας ευθύγραμμης σχέσης μεταξύ καθεστώτων ευημερίας και έλλειψης στέγης επιβεβαιώνονται. Η διαθεσιμότητα αξιόπιστων και συγκρίσιμων πρωτογενών δεδομένων αποτελεί απαραίτητη προϋπόθεση για την περαιτέρω διερεύνηση ενός, μέχρι σήμερα, ανεξερεύνητου προβλήματος ακραίας φτώχειας και κοινωνικού αποκλεισμού.

Λέξεις Κλειδιά: Καθεστώτα Ευημερίας, Έλλειψη Στέγης, Συγκριτική Κοινωνική Πολιτική


Abstract

This article explores the relationship between the broader structure and characteristics of welfare regimes with the phenomenon of homelessness. To this end, the first section provides a review of the literature on welfare regimes and their connection with the phenomenon of homelessness. The second section contains the empirical investigation, in the form of a comparative analysis of primary statistical data and a qualitative analysis of reports and documents relating to national strategies on homelessness in six countries, representatives of the respective welfare regimes. What comes out from the analysis is a confirmation of the difficulty to prove a linear relationship between welfare regimes and homelessness. The availability of reliable and comparable primary data is a prerequisite for further exploration of a hitherto unexplored problem of extreme poverty and social exclusion.

Keywords: Welfare Regimes, Homelessness, Comparative Social Policy

Garland, C. (2014) ‘As Barriers Fall, Contingency Becomes Possibility: Protest Resisting and Escaping Containment and Categorization’, Part II Identity, Embodiment and Categorisation in Eds. Lamond, I. and Spracklen, K. 'Protests as Events: Politics, Activism and Leisure (London: Rowman & Littlefield International) Hardback ISBN/9781783480760 Paperback ISBN/978-1-78348-077-7 eBook ISBN/978-1-78348-078-4 

https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781783480760

Περίληψη Το άρθρο διερευνά τη σχέση μεταξύ των ευρύτερων χαρακτηριστικών της δομής των καθεστώτων ευημερίας με το φαινόμενο της έλλειψης στέγης. Για την επίτευξη αυτού του στόχου, στο πρώτο μέρος επιχειρείται μια επισκόπηση της βιβλιογραφίας περί καθεστώτων ευημερίας και της σύνδεσής τους με το φαινόμενο της έλλειψης στέγης. Το δεύτερο μέρος περιλαμβάνει την εμπειρική διερεύνηση, η οποία διενεργείται με τη συγκριτική ανάλυση πρωτογενών στατιστικών δεδομένων και την ποιοτική επεξεργασία εκθέσεων και κειμένων που αναφέρονται σε εθνικές στρατηγικές για την έλλειψη στέγης σε έξι χώρες εκπροσώπους των καθεστώτων ευημερίας. Το βασικό συμπέρασμα που προκύπτει από την ανάλυση είναι ότι οι δυσκολίες απόδειξης μιας ευθύγραμμης σχέσης μεταξύ καθεστώτων ευημερίας και έλλειψης στέγης επιβεβαιώνονται. Η διαθεσιμότητα αξιόπιστων και συγκρίσιμων πρωτογενών δεδομένων αποτελεί απαραίτητη προϋπόθεση για την περαιτέρω διερεύνηση ενός, μέχρι σήμερα, ανεξερεύνητου προβλήματος ακραίας φτώχειας και κοινωνι...

Research suggests that the prevalence of traumatic brain injury in the homeless population is much higher than in the general population. This is consistent with general poor health amongst homeless people5.
The consequences of TBI can pose particular problems for homeless people. People with a TBI may be reluctant to seek help, and even if they do receive appropriate brain injury support, the long term neurological effects of their brain injuries combined with their lack of stable housing may leave them unable to rely on family, or to implement some of the strategies suggested for cognitive rehabilitation, for example establishing routines to build functional independence. In addition, maintaining health status and managing health conditions after a brain injury is challenging for brain injured people6,7.
The causal relationship between TBI and homelessness is not established, yet studies have shown very high rates (70%8 and 90%9) of homeless people with a brain injury reporting their first injury occurring before they became homeless. The reported prevalence of TBI amongst the homeless population suggests this is a significant issue, yet TBI is seldom mentioned in homelessness research and strategies.

In this chapter, I explore some of the strategies of addressing LGBTQ youth homelessness. Based on 18-months of ethnographic fieldwork in central Texas, 10 interviews with service providers, and 40 interviews with LGBTQ youth experiencing homelessness, I examine what does success mean for LGBTQ youth experiencing homelessness and people trying to assist them, what does failure to achieve success do, and what is the role of happiness and homonormativity in all of these things. I utilize Sara Ahmed’s and J. Halberstam’s theories in order to explicate how success, failure, and notions of happiness shape homonormative strategies in addressing LGBTQ youth homelessness. I specifically investigate discourses around failure and family rejection, rehabilitative framings that construct homelessness as a personal failure, and solutions surrounding success and happiness that some youth internalize. Through this examination, I show how these strategies and solutions potentially further the marginalization of LGBTQ youth experiencing homelessness. I briefly end the chapter thinking through some alternative queer solutions to addressing LGBTQ youth homelessness.

This study examined the experiences that lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, questioning, and 2-Spirit (LGBTQ2S) homeless youth have in shelters and the disjunctures that occur for this population in Toronto's shelter system. The attitudes and behaviours of shelter workers and management towards LGBTQ2S youth were also explored. A Critical Action Research approach, informed by Critical Ethnography and Institutional Ethnography was employed. Thirty-three people participated in this study in the Greater Toronto Area. The study triangulated data from interviews, focus groups, observations and document analysis. The systemic enactment of homophobia, transphobia, and hegemonic masculinity are often normalized in shelters, and create significant barriers to safe, accessible, and supportive services for LGBTQ2S youth. Excessive bureaucratic regulation and the lack of necessary bureaucratic regulation in highly significant areas play a key role in creating the disjunctures that ...

Homelessness in Australia is an urgent and growing problem. On any given night, 1 in 200 people are homeless. The total number of people experiencing homelessness grew by 14 per cent between the last two censuses (2011‐2016), to over 116,000 people.
Homelessness is not just rooflessness. We have seen the greatest increases in homelessness among people living in severely overcrowded dwellings; thus making homelessness increasingly hidden. Certain groups are particularly at risk of homelessness, including Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples (3 in 100), young people (1 in 100), and people from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds (1 in 100). While older people have a lower prevalence of homelessness (1 in 300) than the rest of the general population, alarmingly, over a decade they experienced the fastest growing rate of homelessness: 54 per cent for 55‐64‐year‐olds and 59 per cent for 65‐74‐year‐olds (2006‐2016).
Homelessness has also differed by place. NSW had the highest growth in homelessness, over 37 per cent between 2011 and 2016. The prevalence is highest in the Northern Territory where almost 1 in 20 people were experiencing homelessness. In metropolitan areas across all states and territories, except the ACT, homelessness has increased above national averages. This is largely a reflection of rising housing prices. Rural homelessness has also increased in NSW, Victoria, Queensland, and the ACT – well above national increases.
The key drivers of homelessness include domestic violence, the high costs of housing, the inadequacy and inappropriateness of existing housing stock, and the discharge of people from institutions who do not have safe, stable, affordable homes to go to.
We do not have a housing supply crisis in Australia; we have an affordable housing supply crisis. The unaffordability of housing is stark as follows:
* On any given night, 1 in 200 people in Australia (116,000) are homeless
* Three out of every five low‐income households are currently in housing stress or crisis. This means that 60% of households that sit in the bottom 40% of income distribution are paying more than 30% of their income on housing
* Housing prices have increased significantly
* Almost 80% of new housing stock is priced at the upper end of the housing market
* The average weekly rent growth has resulted in previously lower cost properties being occupied by higher income households
* On average, private and public renters have borne more financial burden than mortgage holders over the last two decades:
  - Average weekly housing costs increased for private renters by 56%, public renters by 64%, and mortgage holders by 36%
* Housing CPI increases have consistently exceeded increases in overall CPI (with the exception of one quarter between 2006‐2018).
These financial stresses fall on top of structural issues around underemployment (1.1m currently), the increase in precarious work, working poverty (1 in 3 in poverty are working), place‐based disadvantage, and a social security safety net that falls below the minimum income for healthy living budget standards for the low‐paid and unemployed. This gives us a cocktail of high financial vulnerability plus very insufficient social and affordable housing options. The result is increased homelessness through overcrowding, increases in housing that is in a poor state of repair and falling below standards for structural defects and facility failure (1 in 5 public houses, 1 in 5 state owned and managed Indigenous houses, 3 in 10 Indigenous community houses, and 1 in 10 community houses).
In a climate of affordable housing scarcity, it is also not surprising that housing remains fairly insecure. While some security of tenure has improved (e.g. recent changed legislation in Victoria1), private rental across Australia is generally insecure.
Housing is a human right. It is fundamental to people’s current lives and their futures. Where housing is safe, secure, affordable, and appropriate, it gives people security and a sense of belonging and is a strong predictor for many other positive outcomes. Conversely, homelessness places people at risk of other poor outcomes, including poor physical health, poor mental health, low educational attainment, poor employment outcomes, financial vulnerability, and intergenerational and long‐term homelessness.
In order to appropriately address homelessness, we need to think beyond an immediate, crisis response to homelessness and answer some fundamental questions about the housing we have and the housing we create:
* Is the housing safe?
* Is it affordable?
* Is it appropriate?
* Is it accessible?
* Is it secure?

The implicitness of historicity This chapter aims to contribute to the "refguration of spaces" approach by critically addressing the concept of historicity on which it relies. Assuming historicity as a "time determination" based on links between past, present, and future events (Weidenhaus 2015, 24), the issue concerns the historicity that underlies this fgurational approach to the so-called production of space, which in sociology summarizes the macro-and micro-social processes involved in the generation and/ or regeneration of space as a set of bodily and materially mediated social relations (Frehse 2020, 3-4). Since Karl Marx's pioneering conceptualization of societal historicity (Weidenhaus 2015, 194), various social scientists have developed their own approaches to the socially specifc rhythms of historic change in diferent societies. If we, against the backdrop of this debate, consider that the refguration of spaces was conceived as a "diagnosis of the present time" (Knoblauch 2017, 16-17, 381-398) that "makes it possible to explain the dynamics of contemporary societies" (Knoblauch and Löw 2017, 16), the historicity of the sociospatial process inquired by the approach becomes a conceptually unescapable issue. So far, however, the historicity of the refguration of spaces has only been addressed implicitly. By assuming the "acceleration of social life" as an overall empirical assessment, Hubert Knoblauch and Martina Löw (2017, 1) emphasize their conceptual commitment to Hartmut Rosa's (2005, 11) thesis on social acceleration as a historically speedier-than-before orientation of social change that particularizes "our present society." Indeed, Rosa's temporal diagnosis also corroborates alternative conceptualizations of the relationship between time and the production of space by authors who use the "refguration of spaces" approach

While architecture contests, conferences, and exhibitions in the 21st century debate construction projects for people who dwell in the streets, in a world where rough sleeping has become a global sociospatial phenomenon, we find an inspiring other knowledge at work on São Paulo’s sidewalks, squares, and roadsides amid the Covid-19 pandemic.          
            If architecture is the human art of ingeniously converting plastic, aesthetic, and technical-constructive intents into physical space, the individuals we will meet introduced me to a unique and challenging architecture. Junior, João, and Cleberson’s ages vary between 39 and 59 years old, as do their places of birth: medium-sized or small cities. What unites them: a remarkable technical-inventive architectural talent, shaped in an everyday life of vulnerability that typifies the socioeconomic, sanitary, and psychological life conditions on the streets of São Paulo, especially since the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic. These men escorted me, the photographer, and the cameraman behind these images through their dwellings on September 2021.

"The definition of homelessness has evolved over time.  Addressing the issue and working toward viable solutions is a debate in itself.  University of Colorado's Dr. Chad Kautzer shares research in a presentation on homelessness, security, and space.  Kautzer's visit is part of the Traveling Scholar Series at the University of Louisiana at Monroe."

ABSTRACT

This thesis examines housing workers perceptions of relationships entered into by women to escape their experiences of homelessness. This project uses interviews with five housing workers as a method of exploring where the social and welfare sector places these women in the current cultural definitions of homelessness.

This thesis argues that women who form these relationships should be identified as being principally homeless due to the unstable nature of the secured accommodation. It aims to make a contribution to the understanding of the complex and hidden nature of women’s homelessness by suggesting that women who enter into relationships in order to put a roof over their head have in no way acquired a successful exit point in their homelessness and that further funding is required to fund women’s based services.

This thesis recommends that homeless women are in need of continual support and that support provided to women is often a product of housing workers perceptions whether someone is deserving of homeless service provision.