Browsing by Subject "Homelessness"

Homelessness has been described as a wicked problem due to its complexity and persistence. In the past few decades, Finland has implemented strategies and measures to tackle homelessness and to prevent it. The results have been effective, and homelessness has decreased significantly. However, despite the success of these implementations, there are still thousands of homeless people in Finland who lack a place to call home. As it remains, homelessness is one of the most challenging problems facing Finnish society. In Finland the explanations for the homeless phenomenon have usually wavered between individual characteristics and structural factors. Substance abuse and mental health problems, divorce or a break-up, rent arrears and over-indebtedness are usually highlighted as individual factors for homelessness. In Finland, the most significant structural factor for homelessness is the inadequacy and shortage of affordable rental housing. There is a shortage of affordable housing especially in the Helsinki metropolitan area, where homelessness nationally is concentrated. This ethnographic study approaches the homeless phenomenon in Finland by exploring the daily lives of two homeless men who also suffer from substance use problems. The study is divided into two parts. The first part focuses on the men’s pathways to homelessness and factors that have contributed to these. This is followed by the men’s conceptualisations of home, what it means to them, and how they make home as homeless people. The second part of the results shed light on the men’s survival strategies, daily activities and their encounters with fellow street people. The data, which consists of fieldwork observations and unstructured interviews, were collected between autumn 2015 and winter 2016. Thematic analysis was applied to analyse the data. The results show that the men’s pathways to homelessness are complex, stemming from both individual and structural factors. Troubled childhoods, lack of education and employment, low levels of income, bad credit, lack of supporting social networks and addiction problems contribute to the men’s situations as homeless people. However, this study shows that many of these factors that are usually considered as individual, are actually more connected to structural factors such as insufficient level of social security and inadequate access to social and health care. The study illustrates that people who are in vulnerable positions to begin with, are more likely to be exposed to these structural factors, the main factor being the lack affordable housing. The participants’ conceptualisations of home show that not all housing is considered home. In adverse circumstances home can be for example a staircase or prison. Furthermore, the research findings show that the everyday life of a homeless person is occupied with attempts to meet basic needs such as eating, washing and finding a place to stay. Much of the men’s daily lives are also devoted to making money, which is usually acquired by stealing. The results indicate that the men’s social contacts consist mainly of people who use substances or are otherwise in similar situations, though encounters with fellow people are not always positive and the threat of violence is often present.

Tiivistelmä – Referat – Abstract This partly autoethnographical study of homelessness within highly mobile people asks if the meaning of home changes and how it changes when people do not have a fixed point of dwelling. It aims to shed light onto the question of space and place within social studies. This thesis combines personal narrative with semi-structured interviews in order to provide better understanding of the seemingly simple concept of ‘home’. The fieldwork was conducted in multiple locations around the world, following the mobile lifestyles of people working within the yachting industry. As the thesis focuses on the lifestyles of elites, it provides a different perspective to homelessness as the studies that focus on forced homelessness do. The ‘spatial turn’, which started in the late 1980’s, has changed the perception of space and place not only within anthropology but in other fields of academia as well. This thesis looks at how this theoretical approach has affected the way that space and place is reflected in everyday life. Utilising discourses from mobility and transnationalism studies, the aim is not to present highly mobile people as disconnected from place but, instead, to show how place and space are still meaningful. The analysis of different spatial perspectives concentrates on three different aspects: home as a dwelling place, home as a community and home as a nation. Through these approaches, the thesis makes the concept of home easier to understand. Another important element that this thesis reveals is how anthropologists should not forget the temporal aspect of life while putting more emphasis on spatiality. The thesis argues that only by combining these two elements, we can fully comprehend the implications of mobile lifestyle. Without the temporal aspect, the understanding of homelessness remains partial. Drawing from previous ethnographic studies of lifestyle migration, this thesis contributes to the discourse of rootedness and the implications of leaving one’s homeland. Identity and nomadic lifestyle are in a constant dialogue with each other, affecting the life trajectories of the “elite homeless”. This thesis looks at how time changes its shape, when life consists of short periods of time in multiple different locations. The interview material amplifies the paradox of the need for a permanent home and the urge to keep travelling. The thesis aims to show how once uprooted, the ability to relocate and return to location bound lifestyle becomes problematic. This thesis also aspires to show how autoethnography can be a useful tool for anthropologists. The writer’s personal experiences act as the structure around which other ethnographic material and the theory build on. As autoethnography is not widely used method in anthropology, the thesis looks into the history and two main branches of autoethnography.

The impact of political strategies aimed to reduce and eradicate homelessness are shaped by the ways in which we conceptualise the problem itself. This study aims to analyse the framing in which the homeless are considered vulnerable in order to uncover possible ways in which this allows for gatekeeping of solutions for homelessness eradication. Building on existing research, the study aims to highlight the dominant problematisations of homelessness and the limitations that they pose on provision of services by local authorities in England. The study focuses on the changes between the newly introduced legislation of the Homelessness Reduction Act 2018 and the Housing Act of 1996 in order to highlight naturalised narratives on homelessness that have been reinforced, and possible shifts in framing that allow for possible change. Analysis of the accompanying code of guidance policy documents using the What is the problem represented to be? methodology allows to compare the framing of homelessness and the proposed solutions in order to better understand whether policy changes creating increasingly accessible service provision or remains selective in whom it helps. The results indicate that the legislative change has widened the parameters of who is to be considered vulnerable; and there is a shift in focus towards prevention allowing for more people to access services. However, the continued use of categorisation and assessment of the homeless on basis of vulnerability, localisation and focus on intentionality of homelessness ultimately maintains gatekeeping of resources. The results indicate possible narratives which may allow for shifts in problematisation of homelessness especially during the current COVID-19 crisis which has created unprecedented shift in homelessness strategies. Further research is necessary to understand better resilience of the legislation during crisis, and how to shift narratives on homelessness into empowering and inclusive instruments.