Challenging the Neoliberal Paradigm: Homelessness, Displacement, and the Need for Care

In reading through the articles for the January 2024 Issue of Australian Social Work I was struck by the important role social workers have played in providing a critique of the hegemony of neoliberalism in social policy and the subsequent shape and delivery of social services including housing. The significant contribution that social work can and should make to enhancing and promoting a caring society is crucial.

In his book The Needs of Strangers (2000), Michael Ignatieff asked a question that has resonated with me for years: what is our obligation at both an individual and societal level to meet the needs of strangers? The question foregrounds key themes that are discussed in articles in this (January 2024) Issue, including the comparative role of structure and agency, the experience of homelessness, the politics of care, the marginalisation of minority groups, the deleterious impact of neoliberal ideas and rationalities regarding personal choice, the logic of the market in the allocation of social resources, the prioritisation of individual responsibility versus a more-nuanced understanding of our interdependency, and the role of the state in reinforcing these conditions.

Article 25 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (United Nations, 1948) states that everyone has the right to housing. Despite this Declaration, homelessness in varying forms continues to be a major social concern of global significance that has been the subject of numerous reports by the Special Rapporteur to the United Nations. Homelessness represents an assault on human dignity enshrined in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (United Nations, 1966).

Homelessness has emerged as a major social policy issue in Australia over the last 40 years (Horsell & Zufferey, 2017; Watson et al., 2023). Experiences of homelessness involve deprivation across a number of dimensions including the territorial, physiological, emotional, and ontological (Daya & Wilkins, 2013; Somerville, 2013). According to the 2021 Australian Census, on any given night 122,494 people experienced homelessness; one in seven people experiencing homelessness are under the age of 12; 23% of people experiencing homelessness are children and young people between the ages of 12–24 years; and one in five people experiencing homelessness are Aboriginal or Torres Strait Island people. Most homelessness in Australia is hidden in the sense that the majority of people are in crisis accommodation, rooming houses, insecure housing, overcrowded dwellings, or are couch surfing (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2023). In 2021–22, 272,000 people received support through Specialist Homelessness Services and a further 105,000 people sought help but were turned away because of staff shortages, a lack of accommodation, or overstretched support services. Over 50% of people seeking homelessness services reported concerns with housing and finances including affordability of rent. Just over 25% cited family violence and abuse (Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, 2022). Although homelessness is not reducible to housing, adequate income support and access to safe and affordable housing remain key elements in any efforts to address homelessness in Australia. Failure to do so highlights the limitations of neoliberal policy across a range of domains and ultimately the failure to acknowledge policy and programs that substantially engage with the intellectual, political, and economic significance of care and solidarity.

Although there have been a range of policy and program responses, arguably with an increased recognition of the complexities of homelessness, for the most part homelessness has been conceptualised as a function of individual deficit with services funded accordingly. Despite homelessness being a part of the social landscape for many years, it is only comparatively recently that it has been identified as a major social issue and hence a focus of government policy and research. Within the Australian context much of this homelessness research has been concerned with definition, causation, effectiveness of programs, subjectivities, and more recently the intersections between homelessness across a range of axes of social and economic disadvantage.

In September 2023 I attended the launch of the August 2023 edition of Parity, the Council to Homeless Persons’ national magazine. Representatives from government, service providers, academics, and people with lived experience attended the event. The August issue of Parity was devoted to exploring the issue of gender and violence. Key messages of the launch were the importance of voice and the need at a national policy level to address gender, with a specific focus on the experience of homelessness of people from gender diverse backgrounds. Alarmingly, it was noted that gender diversity and homelessness was not a key priority of the proposed Australian Government 10 Year National Housing and Homelessness Plan.

I would argue that the extent to which people experience homelessness and displacement in any society provides some insight into the extent that society and, in particular, government cares about their citizens. As Tronto (1993) argued, the creation, repair, and maintenance of human life cannot be undertaken without care. An ethic of care starts from the reality that all human beings give and receive care and we are interdependent beings. Folbre (2020), Federici (2019), and Oksala (2016) all highlighted the way in which failure to substantially engage with the intellectual, political, and economic significance of relations of care and solidarity has contributed to their absence as sites for debate about social injustice and social policy. Neoliberal thinking continues to have a pervasive influence on social life at a global level (Venugopal, 2015; Zuboff, 2019) and key elements of neoliberal thinking are inimical to the politics of care (Lynch, 2022). The impact of neoliberalism on social work and social policy has been well documented (Morley et al., 2017) as has its influence on housing and homelessness policy (Horsell & Zufferey, 2017; Jacobs, 2019).

As highlighted in this Issue by McCosker et al. (2024), COVID-19 exposed the limitations of neoliberalism in blaming the individual rather than addressing broader structural issues, with both immediate and increasingly longer-term impact on homeless people and homelessness services in Australia. Similarly, Horsell (2024) and Dobrovic et al. (2024) have highlighted the neoliberal logic that underpins social policy and subsequent social welfare initiatives generally and responses to homelessness in particular. While neoliberalism is a contested concept (Garrett, 2010; Peck, 2010; Venugopal, 2015), and there are varying forms of neoliberal rationalities (Garrett, 2010; Peck, 2010), there are several key elements that impact on how we care for people. Despite important differences between European, North American, and Australian contexts, there is consensus that, at a minimum, neoliberalism is concerned with prioritising the superiority of economic logic as the basis for public and private decision making (Gilbert, 2015). The effect is to individualise and marketise all relationships and practices in society, including social work interventions, with the aim of promoting market compliance in the behaviour of as many of the citizenry as possible. The current housing affordability crisis in Australia is in part an outcome of neoliberalist thinking (Pawson et al., 2020).

Other articles in this January 2024 Issue have explored the importance of providing social work and care services that are culturally informed and age appropriate. For example, Frederico et al. (2024) highlighted the critical role that social work knowledge and values can play in ensuring a holistic response to the needs of internally displaced persons during and postconflict recovery.

The intervention models discussed in the Frederico et al. (2024) article are underpinned by key principles of human rights and social justice with adequate resourcing to ensure physical, social, structural, and emotional needs are met as a practical realisation of social justice. Frederico et al. (2024) highlighted the key role of social work advocacy on behalf of internally displaced persons in contributing to the success of the intervention, and specifically identifies the centrality of addressing structural barriers as a key aspect of social work intervention. These themes also are explored in the article by Horsell (2024) regarding homelessness, Crisp et al. (2024) regarding social work education, and Tilbury et al. (2024) regarding the role of social work research.

Overall, in this January 2024 Issue of Australian Social Work many contributions highlight the imperative for social workers to engage with the pressing policy and service design questions that confront the social welfare sector generally and the homelessness services sector more specifically.