A changing landscape? Dynamics of accommodation and displacement in UK parliamentary discourse on LGBT homelessness

Abstract

Through an examination of its discursive presence in the UK Parliament (Westminster), this article explores political elites’ problematisations of LGBT homelessness. In particular, I consider whether the dynamics of inclusion and exclusion that have been critically identified in relation to the mainstreaming of ‘gay rights’ in other sites are evident in the emerging discourse on LGBT homelessness in Westminster. I find that the cross-party emphasis on data collection as a predicate for action on LGBT homelessness enables the Conservatives to signal sexual progress without risking the Party’s traditional supporters. Moreover, the almost exclusive focus on LGBT homeless youth in the parliamentary discourse, which is echoed to a lesser degree in existing research, stabilises divisions of ‘deserving/undeserving’ poor and entrenches the relationship between housing security, normative forms of intimacy and anti-migrant nationalist sentiments. To escape the terms of its current emergence, I argue, a coalitional and grass-roots-led definition of the problem of LGBT homelessness is needed.

Keywords:

• Discourse analysis
• homelessness
• housing politics
• LGBT
• Westminster

Introduction

During a 2014 House of Lords debate on local government funding, the Labour Peer Baroness Donaghy lamented that austerity measures enacted by the Conservative Government were having a particularly detrimental effect on ‘the most vulnerable in our communities’. She illustrated this point by noting that the LGBT housing advice service had seen an ‘an all-time high in calls for support’ and drawing attention to the high proportion of homeless young people identifying as LGBT (HL Deb, 9 January 2014, c1689). This is the first time that LGBT homelessness appears in the official UK (Westminster) parliamentary transcripts. Whilst this initial mention is brief, in the intervening years attention given to this issue has increased in both frequency and depth. By 2020, LGBT homelessness was referenced on 11 occasions in Westminster, and had moved from an illustration of the hardships of austerity to a ‘problem’ worthy of attention in and of itself.

This increase in attention to LGBT homelessness appears to fit within a broader pattern of growing support for ‘LGBT equality’ in the UK. Although evident across all the main political parties, changing attitudes towards LGBT people are particularly marked in the Conservative Party - the dominant force in Westminster since 2010 - which shifted from an explicitly homophobic stance at the end of the 20th Century, to legislating on same-sex marriage by the mid-2010s. Unsurprisingly, however, the version of ‘gay rights’ advocated by the Conservative Party is one that corresponds to its economic, national and family values (Monahan 2019; McManus 2011). LGBT progress under Conservative Party rule seems to be confined, in other words, to the ‘sanitised and depoliticised’ inclusionary agenda that has been extensively critiqued in the USA and beyond (Duggan 2002, 2012; Richardson 2005; Santos 2013). Often framed through the term ‘homonormativity’, this critique suggests the recognition of LGBT rights is conditional on their assimilation to heteronormative values, and that people whose gender or sexuality does not uphold these may face exacerbated marginalisation in the era of ‘gay rights’.

This critique has been joined by the concept of ‘homonationalism’ (Puar 2007), which also draws attention to an inclusion/exclusion dynamic at the heart of contemporary LGBT political progress. Interrogating the nation’s new commitment to protecting its LGBT subjects, this analysis argues that LGBT people are beckoned into citizenship in ways that reinforce geopolitical hierarchies and stabilise other - particularly racialised - exclusions (Puar 2007; Butler 2008; Haritaworn, Kuntsman, and Posocco 2013; Kehl 2018). Since their conceptualisation in 21st century North American queer theory, these twinned critiques of LGBT equality politics have travelled ‘virally’ and been applied to a wide range of institutional and geographical contexts; whilst this suggests their intuitive appeal, it can also generate an overly homogenising depiction of sexual politics (Brown 2012; Zanghellini 2012). This article therefore pursues an interrogative approach that explores the conditions through which ‘LGBT homelessness’ has appeared in the UK Parliament, contributing to an analysis of the dynamics of accommodation and displacement in this context.

By considering the inclusionary moves made towards (some) LGBT people in relation to housing rights, this article also goes beyond the frequently examined fields of LGBT inclusion in marriage laws and the military. Despite a tantalising glimpse in a monograph on the biopolitics of homelessness in the USA (Willse 2015), little has been written about the conditions of inclusion-exclusion that frame the subjectification of LGBT homelessness. And yet, in the same period that has seen a growth in UK parliamentary concern for LGBT homelessness, approaches to rough-sleeping and traveller settlements have become increasingly punitive, impoverished people have been subjected to increasing housing precarity, and the deportation of non-nationals has soared (Greenfield and Marsh 2019; The Community Law Partnership 2021). The denial of stable housing has, in other words, been a key means for the Conservative Party to communicate their commitment to public order and strong borders: this article examines parliamentary discourse to consider whether the recognition of LGBT homelessness in a period of enhanced housing instability is coincidental or interrelated.

One of the challenges for an interrogation of LGBT homelessness discourses in the UK is that policy on housing and homelessness is a devolved issue (Colliver 2021). As such, England is the only jurisdiction in which housing is exclusively governed through the UK Parliament. Although Westminster retains authority to supersede or retract devolved powers and the ‘sub-national’ governments face institutional and financial constraints (Connell, Martin, and St Denny 2017), Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland have taken distinctive approaches to homelessness (and, indeed, LGBT rights) since devolution (see further Fitzpatrick, Mackie, et al. 2019; McKee, Muir, and Moore 2017). Whilst a valuable project, however, this article doesn’t provide a transnational comparison. To do so would require accounting for differences in governing parties, overcoming the uneven accessibility of parliamentary transcripts, and – within the UK – navigating the implications of the suspension of the Northern Irish Assembly between 2002 and 2007. Moreover, the structure of the UK political system, along with the diffusional character of discourse, means that the way that LGBT homelessness is invoked in Westminster has implications beyond its technical sphere of influence.

As such, this article inserts itself between the construction of the ‘problem’ of LGBT homelessness in Westminster’s parliamentary discourse and the political horizon that this describes (Bacchi 2012; Bacchi and Bonham 2014). To situate my analysis, the following section draws on existing research to outline the importance of analysing the discourses of homelessness, before turning to review the small but growing body of scholarship on LGBTQ+ homelessness (in the rest of the article the acronym ‘LGBT’ is used to echo the terms of the UK parliamentary discourse, but I adopt the acronym ‘LGBTQ+’ in this section to reflect the broader scope of this research).

The discursive production of homelessness

Since 2010, the UK government under Conservative leadership has overseen a range of reforms on housing and homelessness. This includes capping and conditionalizing housing benefits (Reeve 2017); penalising Roma, Traveller and rough sleeping people by criminalising ‘unauthorised encampments’ (Home Office 2022); deporting migrants without stable housing (Cromarty 2020); and cutting funding for homeless and domestic violence shelters (Women’s Aid 2020). The retraction of state support for housing has been legitimised, in no small part, by the entrenchment of a discourse that individualises and stigmatises poverty and claims that welfare fosters dependency (Lehtonen 2018; Reeve 2017; Wright, Fletcher, and Stewart 2020).

Rather than merely representing the world around us, institutional discourses constitute subjects, naturalise social and spatial divisions and constrain political imaginaries (Bacchi 2012; Bacchi and Bonham 2014; Sandberg and Rönnblom 2016). Indeed, analysis of media coverage (Hodgetts, Hodgetts, and Radley 2006), policy reports (Kennelly 2020), governmental discourse (Horsell 2006) and academic research (Farrugia and Gerrard 2016; Hennigan 2019) draws attention to the ways in which the discursive framing of ‘homelessness’ has material impacts and predicates political responses. Of relevance for this article, the division of homeless people into ‘deserving’ and ‘undeserving’ has justified punitive and conditional approaches in the UK since at least the late 19th Century (Neale 1997, 50).

The place that gender and sexuality have in this distinction between worthy and unworthy subjects is suggested by analyses of British welfare discourse. For example, although it is widely accepted that housing policy in England favours mothers with dependent children (Cramer 2005; Dwyer et al. 2014), this recognition sits in uneasy tension with the continued dominance of the straight middle-aged man as the template for homelessness services (May, Cloke, and Johnsen 2007) and the attribution of poverty and social disorder to ‘failed families’ (Lehtonen 2018; Turner 2017). By analysing the emerging discourses that constitute LGBT homelessness as a political concern I begin to detail one interaction between gendered and sexual norms and the politics of homelessness; further research is needed.

The particular case of LGBTQ+ homelessness

Despite different national sites of analysis, several common themes emerge from the research into LGBTQ+ homelessness. Firstly, the most frequent focus in this research is on LGBTQ+ young people [for a comprehensive review of this scholarship, see Ecker (2016) and Nadan et al. (2022)]. It shows that, whilst family conflict is the main cause of youth homelessness in general, for LGBTQ+ young people it is frequently their sexuality and/or gender identity that is the source of this conflict (Abramovich 2017; Côté and Blais 2021; Tunåker 2015). The particular vulnerability of LGBTQ+ youth to homelessness appears to be corroborated by the finding, consistent across several national contexts, that around 25% of all homeless young people identify as LGBTQ+ (Josephson and Wright 2020; Price et al. 2016). Studies also suggest that being LGBTQ+ affects young peoples’ experiences once homelessness, with these adolescents more likely to be victims of sexual assault, report depression, and use addictive drugs than their cisgendered and heterosexual peers (Cochran et al. 2002; see also, Gattis 2013; Kattari and Begun 2017; Keuroghlian, Shtasel, and Bassuk 2014; Shelton 2015).

In contrast, data on the proportion of homeless adults who identify as LGBTQ+ or the significance this has as a catalyst for homelessness is widely lacking. Research has, however, found that homophobia and transphobia from other residents and service providers affects the accessibility of adult homelessness services (Abramovich 2017, 1485). The routine division of shelters into male and female zones, moreover, reflects the cisheteronorms that continue to shape social services and render trans and gender-nonconforming people particularly vulnerable (England 2022; Doan 2010; McCann and Brown 2021; Mottet and Ohle 2006). Whilst the marginalisation of LGBTQ+ people lead some to call for anti-homophobic and transphobic training for service providers (Dolamore and Naylor 2018; England 2022; Matthews, Poyner, and Kjellgren 2019, 250), others argue that there is a need for ‘identity responsive’ LGBTQ+ homeless services that are distinctive from mainstream provision (London LGBTIQA+ Community Housing Coalition 2021). This has seemed particularly pressing in the UK, given the high-profile contestation of transwomen’s access to shelters as part of a ‘gender critical’ political backlash (Faye 2021).

Although LGBTQ+ migrant homelessness is under-researched, research on LGBTQ+ asylum seekers suggests that this will be a growing area of interest. In Sweden, Wimark (2021) finds that even where there is some recognition of LGBTQ+ asylum seekers’ accommodation needs, services remain oriented around cis-gendered division and nuclear family status. Paradoxically, then, LGBTQ+ asylum seekers are compelled to ‘blend in’ to the cis- and hetero- norms of shared housing at the same time as they are called to evidence their ‘divergent’ identity (Wimark 2021, 712). Literature in the UK depicts a similar situation (Bachmann 2016). LGBTQ+ migrants in the UK are, moreover, likely to face increased housing insecurity in the aftermath of Brexit and as the government pursues detention and deportation as a means of communicating a ‘hostile environment’ to non-nationals (Fletcher and Greatrick 2022).

Collectively, the research on LGBTQ+ homelessness argues that identification as LGBTQ+ increases the risk of becoming homeless; that being LGBTQ+ affects subsequent experiences of homelessness; and that tailored LGBTQ+ homelessness services are needed. It also reflects a particular concern with homeless LGBTQ+ youth and, to a lesser extent, the compounded challenges faced by transwomen seeking refuge and LGBTQ+ migrants. As yet, however, minimal attention has been given to the ‘problematisation’ of LGBT homelessness. Recalling queer theorists’ interrogation of the discursive conditions that allow ‘new’ sexual subjects to be – literally and figuratively – accommodated in the body politic (Berlant and Warner 1998, 548; Foucault 2019; Duggan 2002; Rubin 2011), this article thereby works at the juncture of the two bodies of scholarship outlined above to examine the appearance of LGBT homelessness in UK parliamentary discourse.

Methodology

To gather the empirical data for this research, I used the online platform They Work for You (TWFY), which indexes and archives material from Hansard, the official ‘substantially verbatim’ record of proceedings in the House of Lords and House of Commons (UK Parliament 2022). A search for LGBT homelessness - backdated to 2000, when TWFY began their coverage, and through to June 2021 when I undertook this research - initially resulted in 62 hits, the first of which, as noted above, occurred in 2014. Although I also conducted searches on a range of other potential framings (for example ‘gay+ housing’ ‘trans+ homeless’), these did not produce results. I then sorted through the mentions, discarding material that didn’t make direct reference to LGBT homelessness (in other words where both terms were used, but not in conjunction) or where LGBT homelessness was discussed exclusively in relation to other national contexts.

I then analysed the remaining 41 texts: identifying the topic, type of intervention and the instigator in each case. This revealed that, despite the rebranding of the Conservative Party as LGBT-friendly, mentions of LGBT homelessness were largely initiated by members of the Labour Party through a combination of ‘written questions’ and interventions in debates. In 12 of the 41 texts, LGBT homelessness was either exclusively or centrally the topic of the discussion. Reflecting the way that LGBT homelessness bridges questions of sexual politics and housing politics, the other most extensive interventions occurred during a House of Lords debate on Homelessness (HL Deb, 7 September 2016, c1090) and a House of Commons debate on LGBT History Month (HC Deb, 28 February 2017, c64WH). Suggesting the biopolitical dimensions of the appearance of LGBT homelessness, discussed further below, there was also an extensive discussion during a House of Commons debate on the Census (HC Deb, 17 July 2019, c870). The next stage of analysis entailed reading through the texts in more detail, identifying and recording the themes that emerged. Finally, I returned to the specific mentions of LGBT homelessness, exploring the terms of the appearance, and considering their political constraints and potential. The remainder of the article turns to my analysis and discussion of this material.

Getting the measure of LGBT homelessness

Somewhat paradoxically, LGBT homelessness appears in parliamentary discourse primarily through the recognition that the scale, form and distribution of the ‘problem’ is unknown. Indeed, many of the interventions made in the name of LGBT homelessness in Westminster exclusively take the form of a demand for data. For example, in 2015 Luciana Berger, the Labour Shadow Minister for Mental Health, submitted a written question, asking ‘how many and what proportion of homeless people [.] identify as LGBT’. The response from the representative for the Conservative Government is both curt and non-committal: ‘The information requested is not held centrally’ (HC Deb, 7 December 2015, cW). This pattern of a request for LGBT disaggregated data on homelessness being met with a governmental response that the data doesn’t exist was repeated on numerous occasions between 2014 and 2018.

Both the numeric terms of the demand (‘how many and what proportion’), and the cursory response that this allows (we don’t have this information) lend themselves to a depoliticised and ‘technical’ rendering of LGBT homelessness. Notably, the governmental response performs a sleight-of-hand, which erases the government’s role in deciding what kinds of information is gathered in relation to homelessness. The demand for data, moreover, whilst attempting to hold the government to account for its politics of sexual knowledge production, results in a gridlock whereby political action on LGBT homelessness is predicated on - and thus precluded by the absence of – government statistics. Rather than the absence of data on LGBT homelessness being exceptional, this continues the longstanding marginalisation of sex and sexuality as ‘serious’ topics of inquiry (Rubin 2011; Udry 1993). Tellingly, the same pattern of unwillingness to disaggregate data was also evident in asylum and refugee applications, where it took years of concerted campaigning before the government began to collect and make public the rates of refusal, which confirmed the suspicion of advocates in the field that LGBT applications were being held to different standards of evidence (UKLGIG. 2019).

Whilst the Conservative government typically framed the absence of data on LGBT homelessness as a technical or procedural limitation, rather than a political decision, on some occasions a more explicitly ideological response was evident. During a short debate on homelessness in the House of Commons in September 2016, for example, the Conservative Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, responded to Labour’s identification of young LGBT people as ‘particularly vulnerable’ to homelessness by saying: ‘Homelessness affects all parts of our community: youths, women, members of the LGBT community, families, single people—they all deserve attention in this regard, not just some of them’. (HL Deb, 7 September 2016, c1099). This refusal to acknowledge the uneven impacts of structural discrimination parallels the dismissal of Black Lives Matter movement with the rejoinder that ‘all lives matter’. As such, the Conservative response to LGBT+ homelessness is wrapped up with attacks on ‘identity politics’ that, despite the process of modernisation, remain a staple of Conservative Party rhetoric [see, for example, Truss (2020)]. In this sense, the initial refusal by the Conservative Party to identify LGBT homelessness as a problem suggests that being LGBT wasn’t seen as a mitigating factor: LGBT people were not recognised as deserving homeless. Indeed, instead there is a denial of the existence of this framework for sorting the ‘good’ from the ‘bad’ altogether, as well as a refusal to see cisheteronormativity as structuring housing security. The discursive appearance of LGBT homelessness thereby reflects the ambivalent and contradictory ways in which LGBT issues have been taken up by the UK’s Conservative Party, and by conservative forces more widely (Monahan 2019, 133).

Given the highly visible increases in homelessness across the UK, however, denying the vulnerability of particular groups lent credence to the argument that the housing system tout court that was malfunctioning (Cunnigham (Labour), in HC Deb, 5 September 2019, c460). If the system is the problem, however, a systemic overhaul it the correlated response: this would demand more from the Conservative Party, which champions market-led reform and small-government, than the nominal recognition of LGBT homelessness. Perhaps reflecting this, by 2018 even members of the Conservative Government begin to initiate discussions on LGBT homelessness in the UK Parliament. The Conservative Party’s increasing willingness to recognise the problem LGBT homelessness aligned, in other words, with the continuation of ‘business as normal’.

Even the with the semblance of a cross-party consensus that LGBT homelessness is a problem, however, the narrow focus on a deficit of knowledge remained. The first Conservative-initiated mention of LGBT homelessness emerged in a written statement outlining the 2018 Rough Sleeping Strategy, which set out the government’s vision for halving rough sleeping by 2022 and ending it by 2027. This piece makes a commitment to ‘researching the nature and scale of LGBT homelessness to determine what measures need to be put in place to prevent this’ (HC Deb, 4 September 2018, cWS). What is notable here is that the commitment to research was presented as one of four steps that will be taken to prevent rough sleeping. Claiming data collection as prevention allows the Conservative Party to evidence its commitment to LGBT equality without committing the economic resources or taking the political risks that are needed to improve the lives of marginalised LGBT people (for a vital analysis of this move in relation to racial diversity and equality policies, see Ahmed 2007). Indeed, despite its appearance in the UK Parliamentary discourse, LGBT homelessness remains almost completely absent in policy papers garnering just 5 cursory mentions between 2014 and 2021. This strategy of making research and consultation on LGBT issues highly visible, and then either claiming this research as action, or claiming that the consultative process determined action was not (yet) appropriate follows a pattern that has allowed the Conservative Party to manage the inherent contradictions of ‘conservative sexual progress’. This is, perhaps, most evident in relation to the 2018 public consultation on the Gender Recognition Act, which would have removed some of the barriers to equality that trans and non-binary people face in the UK. The consultation, whilst initially welcomed by trans and allied groups, paradoxically led to increased violence against gender-non-conforming individuals. The government response to this consultation, moreover, was found to display ‘a distinct pattern of significant issues being highlighted, and then receiving no attention, apparent consideration, or even dismissive response’ (Hill 2020). Contextualising the focus on developing ‘knowledge’ about LGBT homelessness within contemporary sexual politics thus serves as a caution against inclusion premised on data-collection, rather than political values.

Parsing the causes of LGBT homelessness

Consistent with the broader patterns of neoliberal governmentality, in the UK the monitoring and surveillance of homeless people has been ‘rolled out’ at the same time as welfare support has been ‘rolled back’ (Peck and Tickell 2002). This double-movement is justified through an increased emphasis on homelessness as the result of a complex network of factors, such as substance use and mental illness, which are individualised rather than connected to systemic violence (Farrugia and Gerrard 2016; Marston 2002), and a nationalist rhetoric that positions non-nationals as underserving of state support (Tyler 2018). In contrast to the discourse on ‘straight’ homelessness, however, parliamentary coverage of LGBT homelessness didn’t attribute it to a complex web of factors. Instead, MPs and Peers uniformly suggested that LGBT homelessness is caused by homophobic and transphobic families. For example, in a debate on the ‘National Civil Service Bill’, Labour Peer Lord Lennie recounted meeting a group of volunteers ‘[working with] young homeless LGBT people who had been made homeless directly as a result of the revelation of their sexuality, usually by angered parents or relatives’. (HL Deb, 25 October 2016, c157). In another debate two years later, the Scottish National Party MP Alison Thewliss similarly commented that ‘It is a heart-breaking reality that although legislation and many attitudes have changed, some people’s attitudes have not. […LGBT youth homelessness] is hugely disproportionate, and often this is due to rejection by their families’ (HC Deb, 28 November 2018, c190WH). Again and again, Labour’s invocation of LGBT homelessness repeats what has been described as the ‘official narrative’: LGBT homelessness is caused by a young person coming out, and a family responding poorly (Willse 2015, 6).

In part, the explanatory power given to ‘family rejection’ in the parliamentary discourse results from the almost exclusive focus on LGBT youth homelessness. The age-specific characterisation of this group navigates the argument that homelessness results from an individuals’ poor choices by displacing responsibility onto the family (Kuskoff 2018, 383). Sympathetic parliamentary discourse on LGBT youth homelessness circumvents the moral stigmatisation of homelessness, in other words, by animating the intersection of paternalistic and neoliberal frameworks, which hold the family responsible for young people (Jensen 2018). This move is, perhaps, a necessary strategy given that housing support has been increasingly framed as an act of generosity towards the deserving poor, rather than part of a system of justice and redistribution (Farrugia and Gerrard 2016, 275). The ‘official narrative’ of LGBT homelessness thereby joins trans medical narratives and LGBT asylum narratives as stories that – whilst simplified or incomplete – must be repeated by LGBT people because they constitute a vital survival strategy (see further Bettcher 2014; Cantú, Luibhéid, and Stern 2020; Prosser 1998).

The repeated framing of LGBT youth as exceptionally blameless for their housing insecurity fortifies and stabilises the moral economy that divides those that ‘deserve’ support and those who do not. Notably, the innocence of youth and right to sexual autonomy is not extended to all young people but is differentially applied in accordance with gendered, racialised and classed intersections (Breslow 2021, 1-25; Willse 2015, 6; Robinson 2021). The homeless LGBT youth stands, for example, in marked contrast to the similarly aged ‘chav mum’ (Tyler 2008), whose sexual behaviours are depicted as both out of control and conniving: more children mean more benefits and a bigger council house. The terms of LGBT youth homelessness’ appearance in the parliamentary discourse forecloses an analysis that could draw attention to the dependence of housing security on family stability and support, job security and an income that young people from impoverished backgrounds are rarely able to attain (Matthews, Poyner, and Kjellgren 2019, 235).

Attributing LGBT homelessness to homophobic and transphobic families also neatly reinforces the notion that ‘troubled families’ pose a threat to social cohesion in the UK, and thus require surveillance and regulation (Jensen 2018; Patrick 2016). As Turner finds from his analysis of the flagship ‘Troubled Families Programme’, which was rolled out in 2012, ‘racialising and sexualised logics of socio-biological control’ are at the heart of Conservative problematisations of the troubled family (Turner 2017, 934). Already animated to justify the exclusion and displacement of immigrants at the border (Butler 2008), stereotyped attributions of homophobia and transphobia join hyper-reproduction and domestic violence as evidence of the moral inadequacy of poor, non-white and migrant parents. In this way, the parliamentary discourse on LGBT youth homelessness reflects what Monahan describes as ‘Tory-normativity’: the ‘fundamental conservative principles of tradition, responsibility, individuality, pragmatism, respectability, privacy, and order have not been overhauled [in the Conservative adoption of LGBT rights], rather these principles have been extended and cemented by being applied to new groups’ (Monahan 2019, 133). By recognising the LGBT homeless youth as a ‘deserving’ subject, the government can present itself as modern and justice-oriented, whilst reinscribing hierarchies of belonging. Moreover, the discourse of ‘family conflict’ erases the impact of the different spatial conditions that conflicts occur in. Notably the problem of overcrowding – a condition that, in part because of the ‘hostile environment’ policies that have removed housing support for most non-nationals, immigrants are disproportionately subjected to in the UK – would become part of a sexual politics of housing. Differences in sexual politics and practices are, after all, much more difficult to navigate where rooms, let alone beds, must be shared.

Finally, whilst the appearance of LGBT youth homelessness in parliament could provide a ‘way in’ for the discussion of other LGBT housing issues, there is very little evidence that this is being leveraged. Indeed, the only co-incidence was in 2018, when Labour Peer Lord Cashman preceded a call for ‘urgent action’ on LGBT youth homelessness with a caution that ‘[w]e must not forget older LGBT people, in particular when they need social or residential care…’ (HL Deb, 12 July 2018, c1014). A manifesto for London LGBTIQA+ community housing, however, begins to indicate the broad alliances that could be animated through a focus on sexuality and housing, noting that the challenges faced by younger and older LGBT people overlap and intersect with ‘trans, BAME, people with addiction, mental health and physical health needs, people seeking asylum and those with multiple and complex needs’ (London LGBTIQA+ 2021, 6). This coalitional work looks to the precedent of ‘alternative’ solutions to housing – including LGBT squats and cooperatives – to expand the imaginary of a future housing politics. By refusing to side-line the needs of those who are likely to be stigmatised as ‘undeserving’ homeless, and instead working through unruly alliances, the false promise of ‘solutions’ to LGBT homelessness that stabilise normative intimacy, sexual morality and anti-migrant nationalism is revealed.

Conclusion

Building on analyses of the productive power of institutional discourses, this article critically examined the novel ‘problematisation’ of LGBT homelessness in the UK. The texts that hail the LGBT homeless subject into mainstream politics revealed a particular focus on data-collection, which had several implications. Firstly, this focus allowed LGBT homelessness to be presented as a technical problem that has not been addressed because of a deficit of knowledge, rather than an absence of political will. Secondly, the significance attributed to a lack of knowledge about LGBT homelessness provided the conditions in which data collection could be claimed as action. This manoeuvre, I argued, allows the Conservative party to manage the tensions inherent in ‘conservative sexual progress’, appealing both to those voters who support LGBT equality, and those who maintain so-called traditional attitudes towards sexuality.

My analysis of the parliamentary discourse also revealed that it has focused, almost exclusively, on the figure of the LGBT homeless youth who has ‘come out and been kicked out’. Whilst recognising that this narrative might provide a lifeline under the violent conditions of austerity, I drew attention to the ways in which it stabilises classed, nationalist and racialised hierarchies. These hierarchies, I argued, underwrite the continued displacement of the ‘underserving homeless subject’ from housing politics. The exceptionalisation of the LGBT homeless youth also forecloses a wider discussion on LGBTQ+ housing, which diminishes the potential for a more transformative, coalitional approach. This approach is already being practiced by LGBT and allied service-providers: attempts to politicise LGBT homelessness within Westminster must follow this example.

Even as critical attention to institutional discourses on LGBT homelessness is needed, however, it is also important to sound a note of caution against complacency. In the UK, the recent disbanding of the LGBT Advisory Panel (Parker 2021), along with the pitfalls of the public consultation on the GRA (discussed above), serve as a reminder that sexual politics is less a ‘straight’ march to liberation and more a path with switch-backs and dead-ends. As such, we must embrace a multidirectional politics that works to transform the limits of current imaginaries, even as we defend the strategies adopted to make lives liveable in the here and now.

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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

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Notes on contributors

Emma Spruce

Dr Emma Spruce is Lecturer in the Politics of Gender, Sexuality and Identity at the University of Liverpool’s Politics Department. Their research draws on intersectional feminist and queer theory to explore the connections between global sexual politics, dynamics of urban inequality, and the ways that individuals and social movements theorise and challenge injustice. Particular topics of interest include LGBT+ Safety Politics, sexuality and housing, and LGBT+ community formation and activism. Along with contributing chapters to edited volumes, Dr Spruce has published articles in Sexualities (2022), Urban Studies (2021) and Environment and Planning D: Society and Space (2020).