Homelessness

Question 1

Hidden Homelessness

Answer 1

Most people who are homeless do not sleep on the street

Question 2

Housing Act, 1996 definition

Answer 2

Someone is homeless if there is no accommodation in England, Wales or Scotland that that person can reasonably occupy together with anyone else who normally lives with them as a member of their family or in circumstances in which it is reasonable for that person to do so

Question 3

Homlessness act, 2002 definition

Answer 3

It extends the priority list to include 16 and 17 year olds and 18 to 21 year olds leaving care, as well as those fleeing violence

Question 4

England and Wales Legislation

Answer 4

Local authorities must offer advice and assistance to all homeless households. However, local authorities only have a statutory obligation to provide long-term accommodation for some households
1 – ‘priority need’
2 – ‘local connection’
3 – Demonstrate not ‘intentionally’ homeless.

Question 5

Priority need for housing groups

Answer 5

• Households with dependent children
• Pregnant women
• Vulnerable people with mental illness or disabilities
• Victims of domestic violence
• Those who lost their homes in disasters such as flooding
• 16 or 17 year olds
• 18 to 20 year olds previously in care
• Those vulnerable due to time spent in care, custody of the armed forces
• Those who have fled their homes due to a threat of violence

Question 6

Intentionally homeless

Answer 6

‘A person becomes intentionally homeless if he deliberately does of fails to do anything in consequence of which he ceases to occupy accommodation which is available for his occupation and which it would have been reasonable for him to occupy’ (Housing Act, 1996)

Question 7

Local connection

Answer 7

If you cannot demonstrate a local connection (lived in a location for 6 of the last 12 months; or have close family ties and/or an established work history family in the area), then the local council has no obligation to give you advice or assistance.

Question 8

Causes of homelesness - beyond structure and agency?

Answer 8

Blame political-economic processes? (e.g. deindustrialisation, increased unemployment, increased evictions, deinstitutionalisation)
Blame the individual? (bad choices, drug or alcohol abuse, relationship breakdown, mental health)

Question 9

Causes of homelessness - Towards a person centered approach

Answer 9

Trace the connections between people, place and wider political-economic and social processes
Problematise ‘choice’, ‘intentionality’ and ‘deservingness’

Question 10

Consequences of homelessness

Answer 10

Social exclusion
Poor physical and mental health
Lower life expectancy (average age of death for a homeless man is 47, homeless women 43)
9 times more likely to commit suicide (www.crisis.org.uk)

Question 11

Homeless provision: background

Answer 11

Popular and highly mediated social construction that single homeless people are ‘undeserving’ of state assistance
The post-war welfare state in the UK brought little direct intervention by local or central government in the welfare of single homeless people, and instead favoured the needs of homeless families and children

Question 12

Homeless provision - 1970s + 80s

Answer 12

Growing numbers and the changing demography of homeless people (younger, substance abuse)
Rise of voluntary sector provision

Question 13

Homeless provision - 1980s/90s

Answer 13

Economic restructuring
Retrenchment of the welfare state through privatisation and residualisation of social housing provision
Reductions in social assistance and employment benefits

Question 14

Homeless provision - 1997-2010

Answer 14

New Labour:
Joined-up governance:
With central government funding, local authorities were designated to take the lead in developing local homelessness strategies, determine the commissioning and regulatory framework through which street-level organisations were to deliver services for homeless people
‘Insiders’/’outsiders’ organisation

Question 15

Homeless in the UK: Coalition

Answer 15

According to DCLG (2014), rough sleeper counts in England was 2,414. Up 37% from 1,768 in 2010.
Exeter’s street count has increased from 23 (2013) to 46 people rough sleeping on any one night (2014)
Major cuts to frontline services and closure of hostels

Question 16

Rural Homelessness

Answer 16

Morphological
Lack of services; tactics to stay invisible
Socio-cultural
Construction of ‘rural idyll’
Scale
‘Small’ places are perceived to be detached from social problems

Question 17

Davey, 2010

Answer 17

‘You’ll get people sleeping rough in woods, fields, and farmers’ barns and they’re a lot harder to count”

Question 18

Revanchist City (Smith, 1996)

Answer 18

• In the 1990s an unabated litany of crime and violence, drugs and unemployment, immigration and depravity now scripts an unbashed revanchism of the city.
• The revanchists in late 19th Century France initiated a revengeful and reactionary campaign against the French people (Rutkoff, 1981).

Question 19

The Revanchist city expresses

Answer 19

a race/class/gender terror felt by middle and ruling class whites who are suddenly stuck in place by a ravaged property market, the threat and reality of unemployment, the decimation of social services, and the emergence of minority and immigrant groups.

Question 20

Rodney King

Answer 20

In LA the 1991 uprising following the acquittal of four police officers in the beating of Rodney King defied habitual media efforts to explain the “riot” as a simple black assault on whites.

Question 21

Bombing of World Trade Center

Answer 21

the bombing of NYCs World Trade center – simultaneously a symbol 1970s downtown renewal and the 1980s global urbanism., evoked images of a real life Towering Inferno and unleashed a xenophobic media hunt for “foreign Arab terrorists” (Ross, 1994).

Question 22

Problems with revanchist thesis

Answer 22

US experience? (Doherty et al 2008)
Homeless people ‘proxy’ for gentrification and ‘rights to the city’ debate
Underplays the agency of city managers, welfare officials, third sector and homeless people themselves who contest these spaces ‘on the ground’ (Johnsen and Fitzpatrick, 2010)
Overlooks the coexistence of ‘non-punitive’ dimensions of care alongside more punitive elements

Question 23

Revanchist City - Containment and clearance

Answer 23

Legislative (criminalising street lifestyles, e.g. No camping ordinances)
Physical (‘defensive architecture’, removal of public toilets, installation sprinkler systems and ‘bum proof’ benches)
Surveillance (CCTV, police moving
people on)
Discursive (media, stigma)

Question 24

Day centers

Answer 24

• Day centres have evolved as charitable responses to gaps in provision for homeless and other disenfranchised people.
• They are vital for sustaining life, preventing survivalist crime and facilitating the transition of homeless people into independent living. Johnsen et al (2005)

Question 25

Day centers in a revanchist city

Answer 25

they provide an environment where homeless people may simply ‘be’ – within a (revanchist) city that doesn’t want them. Johnsen et al (2005)

Question 26

Day centres as ‘spaces of care’

Answer 26

• It is clear that both the providers of such services, and their clients, understand day centres as articulating a quite different dynamic – a deep rooted ‘urge to care’.
• Day centres offer people a vital first step on the journey out of homelessness. Johnsen et al (2005)

Question 27

Day centres as ‘spaces of fear’

Answer 27

• For, day centres are themselves often operating in ‘survival’ mode, faced with the threat of imminent closure resulting from unsustainable funding arrangements and staffing shortages.
• Furthermore, they cater for desperate people, many of whom behave in challenging and unpredictable ways, and all of whom ‘other one another’ in an attempt to safeguard the sustainability of the service and protect themselves from ‘assaults on self-identity’ Johnsen et al (2005)

Question 28

Resurgence of gentrification

Answer 28

• The resurgence of gentrification following the economic depression of 1989-1993, and the expansion of homelessness to which it contributes, will not mean the end of the revanchist city and the instigation of a kinder, gentler urbanism.
• The more likely scenario is a sharpened bipolarity of the city in which white middle-class assumptions about civil society retrench as a narrow set of social norms against which everyone else is found dangerously wanting.
  Smith, 1996

Question 29

Cloke et al (2007) - rural homelessness and services

Answer 29

Rural places reflect particular local qualities which contextualize both the circumstances of homelessness and the provision of services in response to those circumstances.

Question 30

Cloke et al (2007) - Associated values of rural areas

Answer 30

The first suggests that rurality offers a place of escape and of potential therapy.
The second strand is one which associates rurality with leisure.

Question 31

Cloke et al (2007) - places used in study and history of provision

Answer 31

• The friary house, represented more than 80 years of local provision for homeless men, and its existence and position in contemporary landscape of provision is specific to that historical record of service.
• Similarly, the recent service initiative in Bodmin appears to benefit from an historic presence of other forms of service provision in the town, a presence which has brought enduring familiarity with the proximity of needy ‘others’.
• In Scarborough there is an apparent absence of service history, which could be interpreted as a history of denial or spatial purification in order to protect the town’s tourist image.

Question 32

Cloke et al (2007) - the service status of these case studies

Answer 32

Politically, it can be argued that the case studies each represent ‘outsider’ status services, but there are important differences here within a range of places where the reach of central government funding and regulation appears limited or absent.