Peter Somerville University of Lincoln 15 January 2014 · 1/15/2014 · “What the fuck am I...
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Homelessness Peter Somerville University of Lincoln 15 January 2014
Transcript of Peter Somerville University of Lincoln 15 January 2014 · 1/15/2014 · “What the fuck am I...
Homelessness
Peter Somerville
University of Lincoln
15 January 2014
Source: Inside Housing, 11 January 2013
Perceptions of homelessness
• Visible ‘rough sleepers’
• Unproductive/parasitical,
dangerous/unpredictable, and largely
responsible for their own plight (Takahashi,
1997)
• Victims – of the system, of health problems, of
life (misfortunes of upbringing, etc)
• The case of Michael Gething
Explaining homelessness?
• Homelessness is not a measurable ‘fact’ or ‘real object’ or ‘cultural phenomenon’
• ‘Homeless’ is just a label that is pinned on people, many of whom reject it
• Narrative approaches – see homelessness in terms of episodes in a life-course, which are often symptomatic of deeper problems
• Each life is unique (see www.bit.ly/somewhere-nowhere), yet common factors exist – childhood traumas, substance misuse, mental health problems and institutionalisation (social services care, prison) (see Brown et al, 2012)
• Limitations of narrative approaches – people can tell a good story but cannot always understand the circumstances surrounding past events in their lives or even remember the events themselves (how reliable can one be as a witness of one’s own life? Yet can anyone else be more reliable?) See the case of Ruth
Ruth’s story
• A couple of weeks before my birthday I'm going down to the groups, you know, getting my samples on and off. Once I scored I was feeling like shit 'cos my contact had been cancelled. Having a load of gear in. I was like, I've had enough. Sorted all my shit out, went in the bathroom. Wrote a letter. The lot. You know, goodbye world. To my kids, “You're better off without me. Go and have a future 'cos I'm always letting you down. At least now I'm gone you can move forwards without me. It's not you. I love you that much I'm leaving you so I don't put any more shit on you.” You know, one of those types of things. Anyway, I gets about 15mil into the thing and I looked up into the mirror and I could see like my youngest son waving to me and he's crying saying, “Don't leave me.” I'm like, “What the?” Anyway, I took the pin out my arm and I launched it across the room. It was full and I just fucking launched it. Was like, “What the fuck am I doing?” and just launched it. I've not touched it since.
Responses to homelessness
• Revanchism – the exclusion (from prime spaces) and abjection of homeless populations (Mitchell, 1997, 2003)
• Abjection (Kristeva, 1982) – cast out and down into marginal spaces such as ghettoes (Wacquant, 2008) and shelters, where they are contained, confined or ‘maintained’ (in abeyance) – ‘coercive care’ (Johnsen and Fitzpatrick, 2010)
• Limitations of revanchism – some services provide unconditional support and ‘receptivity to the other’ (Cloke et al, 2010)
The position of homelessness
organisations
• Ambivalence on revanchism
• Progress requires service coordination and
user empowerment
• This can be achieved by keyworker advocacy
within a politically driven community of
practice
• This is illustrated by the case of Stoke-on-Trent
Stoke-on-Trent
• The politically salient event (compare the death of Michael Gething in Totnes)
• The Priority Needs Group – a community of practice
• The consortium of ‘big players’ – ensures service coordination
• Dilemmas of ‘professionalisation’ –bureaucratisation/managerialisation versus specialisation, serving government versus receptivity to the other, containment versus rehabilitation, professionalism versus voluntarism, monopoly versus competition, quantity versus quality, picking low-hanging fruit versus unpicking deep-rooted problems
• The ‘smaller players’ – on the periphery of mainstream service provision but increasingly specialising in more complex cases
Conclusion
• Homelessness is complex and contested
• The revanchist thesis explains much (but not all)
about the contemporary response to
homelessness
• We do know how to assist and rehabilitate
homeless people but the political will is lacking at
both national and local levels – policy tends to
reflect the prejudices of the powerful majority
rather than the needs of the powerless few
References
• Brown, P., Morris, G., Scullion, L. and Somerville, P. (2012) Losing and Finding a Home: Homelessness, multiple exclusion and everyday lives. Final Report.
• Cloke, P., Johnsen, S. and May, J. (2010) Swept Up Lives? Re-Envisioning the Homeless City, Wiley-Blackwell.
• Johnsen, S. and Fitzpatrick, S. (2010) ‘Revanchist sanitation or coercive care? The use of enforcement to combat begging, street drinking and rough sleeping in England’, Urban Studies 47, 10.
• Kristeva, J. (1982) Powers of Horror: An essay on abjection. New York: Columbia University Press.
• Mitchell, D. (1997) ‘Postmodern geographical praxis? The postmodern impulse and the war against the homeless in the “post-justice” city’, in C. Minca (ed) Postmodern Geography: Theory and practice. London: Blackwell.
• Mitchell, D. (2003) The Right to the City: Social justice and the fight for urban space. London: Guilford.
• Somerville, P. (2013) ‘Understanding homelessness’, Housing, Theory and Society 30,4: 384-415.
• Takahashi, L. (1997) ‘The socio-spatial stigmatization of homelessness and HIV/AIDS: toward an explanation of the NIMBY syndrome’, Social Science and Medicine 45: 903-14.
• Wacquant, L. (2008) Punishing the Poor: The new government of social insecurity. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press.
Acknowledgments
• The research on which this presentation was partly based was funded by ESRC, JRF and DCLG –research award RES-188-25-0016.
• The research team included:– Peter Somerville:
– Lisa Scullion:[email protected]
– Phil Brown:[email protected]
– Gareth Morris
