Conference Agenda

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

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/

Many cities in Africa face an escalating crisis in adequate provision of basic services such as water, housing and mass transit system. The simultaneous interplay of these factors makes urban planning in these cities difficult and often a frustrating task for the state and city planners specifically. As in many developing countries, housing shortage is a challenge that Ghana has to battle with. The housing deficit in Ghana has been estimated at between 750 000 and 1.3 million units. The difficulty in having access to decent homes which stems from reasons such as; rising costs of homeownership, constraints in land acquisition, low and irregular incomes for the vast majority of people and more importantly the inability of the state to provide homes for its citizens, have forced many urban dwellers to rent ‘cheap’ homes in slum communities, become care takers of uncompleted homes or continue to live in old compound houses. The purpose of the study was to analyse access to housing by the urban poor in Ghana. It explored how different communities employed different strategies by the urban poor to access housing. A qualitative case study research was conducted in four communities in two urban areas-Accra and Winneba in Ghana. One hundred and thirty-five people were interviewed in the four communities. The sustainable livelihood and the modes of economic integration concepts were adapted to study assets needed to acquire housing, land and community infrastructure and how the assets are regulated by local associations in the communities. The main findings of the research are as follows: firstly, poor housing communities in urban areas differ in Ghana and there are structural differences between communities; secondly, location of poor housing communities determined the assets needed by residents to access land, housing, housing facilities and community infrastructure. The study concluded from the empirical findings that the poor look for various means to access their housing. The study recommends an alternative policy that allows effective collaboration between the state and community association leaders at the community levels to play a pivotal role in housing access in poor communities.

This paper draws on governmentality studies as a means to better understand the restructuring of the welfare state and the ways in which resources are provided to houseless individuals in Portland (OR) in the United States. Analyzing code and zoning changes, grants and incentives as government technologies, this paper sheds light on the ways in which civil society and third sector organizations are governed in a manner that encourages them to provide resources and take part in the response to houselessness. Through an assemblage of legal, political and financial apparatuses, public authorities manage to produce mechanisms of enrolment of civil society in the pursuit of its own goals. Based on the responsibilization of self-governing citizens, these technologies tend to transfer to civil society the responsibility to address the housing crisis. This paper highlights the flexibility of the shadow state, non-state actors being included and absorbed depending on the needs of public authorities to implement a public response to houselessness.