Debates around the topics of precarious housing and homelessness center around reemerging questions on housing markets and housing (in-)equality. Decreasing housing affordability and increasing tenure insecurity intensified under ongoing processes of commodification and state deregulation in recent years. Not least because of the COVID pandemic and a seemingly permanent state of political and economic crisis, the current housing market situation increasingly puts tenants under pressure. While studies of housing precarity remain highly context-sensitive, broader power relations intensify the vulnerability of tenants along markers of gender, race/ethnicity, or class. Rental driven inequalities not only affect low-income households and migrants, but newly entangle long-time and seemingly secure tenants. Increasing rents and rental arrears displace vulnerable tenants from their homes who find themselves in challenging situations that can result in homelessness and intensify prolonged housing instability. This session will focus on the central significance of newly emerging forms of housing precarity and homelessness as well as tenants’ different experiences in changing urban contexts. Contributions should explore geographies of homelessness and precarious housing which are tied to the commodification of housing markets and increasing housing inequality. The following questions serve as topical guidelines for submissions: How do tenants navigate different forms of precarious housing and ways in, out, through or around homelessness? How do tenants experience housing inequality and respond to their changing housing situations? How do tenants secure their survival and which strategies do they apply to deal with increasing housing market pressures? Who has the right to dwell and benefit from social services, and who is excluded? How do housing policies, public interventions, and different actors on housing markets reposition tenants? And how do these dynamics affect the reconfiguration of urban areas (e.g., segregation, residential mobility patterns)? The aim of this session is, therefore, to apply a holistic perspective to the topics of housing precarity and homelessness. We welcome contributions on empirical studies, conceptual considerations, innovative methodological approaches, or political interventions.
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Everyday politics of older women experiencing homelessness in Czech Republic
Petra Tamasova
Masaryk University, Czech Republic
Older women experience homelessness as an intersection of gender, age, worsening physical (and sometimes mental) health, and precarious living conditions. They age in unsuitable, insecure flats, dormitories or shelters, that are often not prepared to meet their needs. With regard to critical gerontological theories the concept of everyday politics (Beveridge, Koch 2019) has the potential to expand the understanding of home as a set of practices by which people "do" home, and the existence of the political "selves” (de Certeau 1984) of older women in inadequate housing. It has the potential to be emancipatory and look critically at the social construction of marginalized people as passive and older people as weak, dependent, or pitiful, without denying the structural factors defining the objective conditions of their life situations.
In this context, we ask how home-making or un-making (Vandenbeld Giles, 2020) is done in these “unhomey” places? The daily lives of older homeless women involve constantly negotiating and creating strategies not only for survival but for fulfilled life. They stand for themselves against strangers, weather, socio-economic and housing realities, amidst the complex challenges of ageing. Their living on the streets or in precarious housing is an extreme form of resistance – they resist ageing in places they don’t want to, and they resist death, even if this is what one would expect amidst lack of public and state attention on their condition. Thus, this contribution uses the lens of the concept of ‘everyday politics’ to show how everyday political acts may (re)construct or de-construct sense of home, as essential constant of life, for them. Through ethnographic research and photography methods in Brno and Prague with older women experiencing different forms of precarious housing, this work will reveal the different ways in which sense of home and community is created in different spaces by older women experiencing precarious housing condition.
Understanding the meaning of home and nature of home-making for a specific group of older women, their connection to places, and the nuanced differences between a home and housing is crucial for developing effective social and housing policies in times of worsening housing crises.
Regional aspects of the healthcare system for people experiencing homelessness in Hungary
Noémi Annamária Vajdovich
Eötvös Loránd University - Doctoral School of Earth Sciences (Budapest, Hungary); Metropolitan Research Institute - Városkutatás Kft. (Budapest, Hungary)
Regional aspects of the healthcare system for people experiencing homelessness in Hungary
The overall health of people experiencing homelessness is significantly influenced by the quality of the healthcare they receive (Bedmar et al., 2022; (National Institute for Health and Care Excellence [NICE], 2022)). The way they are treated, the conditions under which they receive care, where they are provided services, and their access to healthcare are all crucial factors. The organization of healthcare systems often makes it more challenging for people experiencing homelessness to receive adequate care. At the same time, serving people experiencing homelessness may also complicate the healthcare process and may require substantial resources from the healthcare system. My research focuses on the spatial analysis of two key issues: (1) exploring and examining the territorial aspects of healthcare for people experiencing homelessness in Hungary within a Central European context, by studying both the healthcare system’s geographical layout and the health conditions of homeless individuals; (2) understanding how healthcare of people experiencing homelessness in Hungary changed during the Covid-19 pandemic compared to any typical periods in the recent past.
The research applies a mixed-methods approach, combining the analysis of national quantitative territorial statistics from the National Health Insurance Fund Management with an overview of current Central European literature. It also examines qualitative data from interviews conducted in the course of 2023 and 2024 with seven experts and six homeless individuals. The quantitative data primarily concerns individuals registered as homeless between 2015 and 2021, who were legally entitled to access healthcare services for six months based on the certification of their homeless status.
The study emphasizes that a considerable number of homeless individuals struggle with a range of serious and convoluted health conditions, which may be linked to significant trauma, severe mental health issues, a number of untreated illnesses, substance abuse, or a lack of family and social support. Whereas the healthcare system available to people experiencing homelessness is very complex, over the last three decades, some central European countries, including Hungary has developed a 'segregated' healthcare system for homeless people. The presentation will delve into the empirical evidence of the linkages of ill health and regional inequalities of services among people experiencing homelessness that suggests that such a service delivery has limited success in supporting recovery and reintegration into society for people experiencing homelessness.
Bedmar, M. A., Bennasar-Veny, M., Artigas-Lelong, B., Salvà-Mut, F., Pou, J., Capitán-Moyano, L., García-Toro, M., & Yáñez, A. M. (2022). Health and access to healthcare in homeless people: Protocol for a mixed-methods study. Medicine (Baltimore), 101(7), e28816. https://doi.org/10.1097/MD.0000000000028816
National Institute for Health and Care Excellence. (2022, March 16). Integrated health and social care for people experiencing homelessness (NICE Guideline No. 214). Available from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK579613/
Pathways from Homelessness to Secure Housing. The Case of Vienna.
Judith Schnelzer, Philipp Schnell
Austrian Academy of Sciences, Austria
Previous research on pathways of homelessness has addressed the multifaceted nature of housing transitions for persons without stable housing solutions. This body of researchfocuses on people experiencing homelessness (PEH) and the interaction of life-events, housing conditions, and triggers of homelessness that shape individual housing pathways. However, long-term perspectives that span the lifetime of PEH and analyze (housing) transitions into, during and back out of homelessness seem scarce. To address this research gap, we conducted 20 biographical interviews with persons who have experienced homelessness during their lifetime and are currently living in Vienna. Based on five causal dimensions of homelessness, we (re-)constructed individual pathways of homelessness as a succession of different forms of housing according to the ETHOS Light typology. Consequently, we analyzed transitions into homelessness, pathways through phases of homelessness and transitions into stable housing solutions. A special focus has been put on the crucial role of social service institutions in Vienna and their support of housing transitions and the stabilization of housing pathways.
From our results we distinguished different patterns of pathways expressed in the succession of different types of housing according to ETHOS Light. We broadly defined three groups of pathways of persons who experienced homelessness as transitional, episodic or chronic phenomena. These three groups differed in the overall duration of phases of homelessness, the number of transitions between types of homelessness according to ETHOS Light, the interplay of causal dimensions of homelessness, and people’s ability to use scarce resources to stabilize their overall housing situation. Especially, people in each of the groups made use of the network of social services differently to navigate personal housing pathways and enable transitions out of homelessness. Finally, our results highlight the role of the social services network in stabilizing housing pathways and in charting ways out of homelessness. Also, wediscuss the role of Housing First programs for providing housing perspectives for PEH andfor creating a long-term solution to the stabilization of complex pathways of homelessness.
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