Houses with elastic walls: negotiating home and homelessness within the policy domain

Abstract

Efforts to address homelessness in New Zealand are marked by competing discourses that construct it as a housing issue, or more radically, as an issue of social exclusion. This paper presents a case study that illustrates the difficulties of reconciling these discourses when framing homelessness policy. Research was conducted with a national organisation involved in advocating to the New Zealand government on homelessness policy. Members of this group participated in focus groups exploring the meanings of home, homelessness and their advocacy work. The paper traces the challenges presented to the politics of social action by recognising homelessness as an issue of social exclusion, but needing to frame it as an issue of housing to effect policy change. It argues that social activist groups must routinely make pragmatic and strategic compromises that challenge the integrity of their ideological positions and their conceptual understandings, and develop group practices that allow them to resolve the tensions that this can generate.

Keywords:

• advocacy organisations
• discourse
• home
• homelessness
• housing
• policy
• social exclusion

Introduction

The academic literature on homelessness features substantial debate on the most effective way to understand and theorise the issue, and respond to it in policy frameworks (Daly 1996; Edgar et al. 1999; Toro 2007). Authors offer both ‘socio-structural’ and ‘individual agency’ accounts of homelessness and most point to a complex interplay of structure and agency in their analyses (Anderson 2007, p. 624; Minnery & Greenhalgh 2007). In the worlds of advocacy, policy-making and service provision, organisations do not have the luxury of distanced reflection and critique. Organisations seeking to respond to homelessness must make the best use of limited and uncertain knowledge to achieve maximum immediate impact for homeless people (Phelan & Norris 2008). A key aspect of advocacy and policy-making, then, is the conscious selection of a definition of homelessness that presents the most exigent framework within the context at hand. However, defining homelessness is not simply a conceptual exercise; it is equally a political concern. The selected framework may have a direct bearing on understandings of and responses to homelessness, ultimately producing real effects for the lives of homeless people (Neale 1997; Anderson 2003; Schiff 2003; Kingfisher 2007).

Historical analyses bear this out, showing that social attitudes towards homelessness in pre-Second World War Britain, Canada and the United States commonly framed it as a problem of ‘thriftlessness, incompetence, intemperance, and immorality’ (Daly 1996, p. 54). Ideas about who was thereby ‘deserving’ of charity underpinned homelessness policies of the day, regulating people's access to assistance. Although now more complexly interwoven (Anderson 2007; Laurenson & Collins 2007; Minnery & Greenhalgh 2007; DeVerteuil et al. 2009), explanations of homelessness in contemporary Western societies still tend to involve an ideological continuum (Schiff 2003; Williams 2005), which structures thinking about the issue. Individualist explanations hold that homelessness is the result of personal failings or lifestyle choices such as alcoholism or criminal deviancy. Structural explanations view people who are homeless as the victims of macro socio-economic factors such as economic restructuring, changes in housing and labour markets, and poverty. Although these explanations are more nuanced than polarised in practice, they produce important implications for policy directions (Neale 1997; Minnery & Greenhalgh 2007; Cronley 2010). An emphasis on individualist explanations leads to minimal services, punitive responses and a narrow focus on resolving the most visible forms of homelessness, whereas an emphasis on structural explanations typically stresses recommendations for broad societal intervention, together with housing subsidies and the provision of temporary accommodation or affordable, permanent housing (e.g. Phelan & Norris 2008).

In contrast to ongoing academic debates, an emphasis on structural explanations of homelessness, framed as an economic issue of houselessness, has emerged as predominant in advocacy and service provider discourse (Passaro 1996; Anderson & Christian 2003). ‘Housing-first’ initiatives are now routinely promoted as best-practice service responses (Tsemberis et al. 2004; Padgett 2007), yet it is well known that housing provision alone can often fail to produce good long-term outcomes for people who are homeless (Busch-Geertsema 2005; Seal 2007). This is because physical dwellings represent only one aspect of home; home also entails intangible bonds of affiliation and a sense of belonging in relation to a place and community (Mallett 2004; Blunt & Dowling 2006). In response to the perceived shortcomings of housing responses, many researchers argue that it is important to see homelessness in more radical terms, as a material lack experienced in conjunction with economic, political and cultural exclusion (e.g. Edgar et al. 1999). This broad social exclusion discourse argues that homelessness ‘dis-members’ people from society (Scanlon & Adlam 2008) and restricts people's control over their daily lives as well as their wider citizenship rights (Somerville 1998). However, social exclusion is itself a contested idea with different implications depending on who is included and who is excluded, presenting no certain solution to underpin a response (Scanlon & Adlam 2008).

In an effort to understand the impact of such persistent conceptual uncertainty for the advocacy and policy-making process, we conducted research with a national organisation involved in advocating to government on homelessness policy and operational frameworks for statistical enumeration. Selected members of this organisation, the New Zealand Coalition to End Homelessness (NZCEH), agreed to contribute to a broader research project exploring the discursive production of home and homelessness in New Zealand. Participants brought different ideological positions to the discussion, and with them different understandings of homelessness and its relationship to social exclusion. The tensions generated animated and complicated discussions, and escaped efforts to focus debate on housing status as an operational framework for statistical enumeration by the government. This paper examines the NZCEH case to explore the ongoing debate between social exclusion and housing as key frames of reference for homelessness action, and to reflect on the challenges of reaching consensus as a platform for action in influencing social policy agendas.

New Zealand Coalition to End Homelessness

The NZCEH was established in 2007, marking an important milestone for institutional responses to homelessness in New Zealand. Although declining housing affordability, overcrowding and substandard housing have long been concerns in New Zealand, media reporting and local research on homelessness has historically been minimal. With some exceptions, research has focused on rough sleepers to the neglect of a much larger population of the tenuously housed. Homelessness has been viewed in individualist terms, as a problem only for a small population for whom sleeping rough was primarily a lifestyle choice (Leggatt-Cook 2007). Local social services have remained somewhat underdeveloped, dominated by the provision of food, clothing and night shelters, delivered by a fragmented voluntary sector with no central coordination, funding or government policy (Richards 2009). However, the context has changed significantly in recent years. Awareness of homelessness has grown, stimulated partly by the actions of local government authorities to work with social service agencies to address homelessness in their cities (Mora 2002; Al-Nasrallah et al. 2005; Gravitas 2005; Laurenson & Collins 2007). Two national forums were held in 2005 and 2006, during which attendees identified the lack of central government policy as a key issue. A mandate was subsequently set for the establishment of a national organisation to coordinate advocacy to the New Zealand government on homelessness.

The Steering Group of the NZCEH are representatives of local government authorities, and non-profit and faith-based organisations that deliver services to people who are homeless. The Coalition operates largely on a voluntary basis with members meeting bimonthly in different cities around the country. The organisation is broadly aligned with a social exclusion discourse, regarding housing as a fundamental human right that has implications for human well-being and dignity. A further critical tenet for the group is an acknowledgement that structural disadvantage and the loss of cultural identity linked to the forces of colonisation have resulted in indigenous New Zealanders being disproportionately affected by factors that increase their risk of homelessness (Davey & Kearns 1994; Gravitas 2005). Although no authoritative statistics exist, Māori appear to be over-represented among people who are homeless (Leggatt-Cook 2007). The NZCEH argues that consideration of Māori cultural values is vital for achieving effective solutions to homelessness in the New Zealand context.

The NZCEH has an explicit agenda for political action: to end homelessness in New Zealand. As a national advocacy group, it represents a key site for the discursive construction of homelessness in New Zealand. Although a relatively new organisation at the time of the research, the NZCEH had already begun to influence policy by organising national forums, establishing links with community housing, local government and central government organisations, and commissioning reports (see Richards 2009). When the present research was conducted, a major focus of the Coalition's work was to influence the framework of definitional categories for enumerating homelessness, subsequently developed by the government department, Statistics New Zealand. The research thus coincided with the NZCEH moving into closer dialogue with policy-makers.

As part of a broader research project exploring the meanings of home and homelessness and organisational responses to homelessness in New Zealand, NZCEH members were asked to participate in two semi-structured focus groups in late 2008. The project was approved by the Massey University Human Ethics Committee. Five NZCEH members volunteered: a public health professional (the Coalition's chairperson); the Māori adviser and co-ordinator of the Coalition; the manager of a Salvation Army hostel; a social worker for a government-funded mental health service for homeless people; and the manager of an inner-city drop-in centre. All participants are referred to by pseudonyms in this paper. Two focus groups lasting between 1 and 1.5 hours were facilitated and recorded by the first author, then transcribed. In the first focus group, participants explored their understandings of homelessness, drawing on their experience of home as housed people and their work with people who are homeless. In the second focus group, later that day, they explored the work of the NZCEH with particular reference to the contextual issues, challenges and opportunities they faced as an organisation attempting to influence government policy. Data were subjected to an initial content analysis to identify the group's key constructions of home, homelessness and policy-making, and subsequently to a discourse analysis that sought to reveal the production of uncertainty in recurrent questions, reflective pauses and unresolved debates. The next section presents our analysis, with illustrative quotes, in two parts: first, it examines the participants' attempts to reconcile the social exclusion and housing discourses in their notion of ‘houses with elastic walls’; and second, it considers their ultimate concession to a housing discourse when considering the perceived demands of the policy domain.

Constructing home and homelessness

In order to open up a space to explore the concept of homelessness, participants were first asked to consider their understandings of ‘home’. This strategy was underpinned by the argument that it is difficult to understand the way homelessness is constructed without examining its theoretical converse, ‘home’ (Moore 2000; Kellett & Moore 2003). In their discussion of home, the participants spontaneously articulated autobiographical narratives to examine ideas gleaned from popular culture (‘home is where the heart is’), culturally specific understandings (Māori notions of home) and their diverse life experiences (moving house; immigration). Their work as homelessness advocates and knowledge of policy frameworks meant that they were also able to ‘speak out of their role’ (Milligan et al. 2011, p. 14) and critically unpack each notion expressed. Home was variously constructed as a place of belonging and a site of exclusion; a place of sanctuary and a memory of trauma. In the next section we discuss three interconnected ideas about home and homelessness that were important foci for the group's discussion: social and cultural dis/connectedness, home as place, and practices of home. We return to these ideas in the second part of our analysis where we turn to policy considerations and document how these ideas were renegotiated in considering their strategic relevance for policy.

Social and cultural connectedness

A centrally privileged theme in the participants' talk linked home with people, whether one's partner, family or the wider community. Home was a place where the participants felt connected to others, achieving a sense of belonging that was important for their identity as individuals. As Janis described:

I spent three years travelling around the world and all the time I had a very definite sense that my home was in England with my Dad. But now I'm [settled in New Zealand] I don't feel the same need to have that anchor although I know he's still there.

The group's emphasis on social connections and kinship ties fits well with ideas that extend back to foundational concepts in social psychology, such as Cooley's (1964 [1902]) notion of the looking-glass self. According to Cooley, human beings are fundamentally social, gaining ideas about themselves through social interactions that shape self. Significant others, particularly our families, play an especially formative role in our identities. The group's emphasis on the centrality of social relationships for a sense of home was also derived from their knowledge of homelessness. Dysfunctional family dynamics and the breakdown of social connections with family and friends are recognised as factors that can both precipitate and sustain homelessness (Lemos & Durkacz 2002; Paradise & Cauce 2002). Janis, a social worker in a mental health service, explained:

Janis:

You're so much more likely to succeed and have successful [addiction] treatment if your family support you … if you look at some of those people who are homeless, they've got no supports. They haven't got a hope.

Kathryn:

If you think [about] all the things that we've said are important about home … it's the family, it's the support and knowing someone's there.

The group also discussed Māori notions of home, in which social connections with whānau (family) were merged with a sense of connectedness to cultural identity. Home has multiple meanings in Māori culture, but tūrangawaewae, or land to which one has a genealogical tie, is a culturally significant notion that is fundamentally implicated in Māori identity (Smith 1992; Jahnke 2002). As Jo, the Māori adviser and coordinator of NZCEH, explained:

If somebody asked any Māori where home is they will directly relate back to their tribal boundaries. I'm a Māori who has never lived in my tūrangawaewae … but when I stand up to do my pepeha, it's directly to that iwi (tribe) … I would always culturally go there and spiritually that's where I am.

Tūrangawaewae is popularly interpreted as ‘a place to stand’ (Davey & Kearns 1994, p. 74). In Jo's case, although she has never lived in her tūrangawaewae, her genealogical connections to that place give her a ‘place to stand’ in the world, or, a sense of cultural and spiritual belonging that is integral to her lived identity as Māori. ‘Doing pepeha’ is a complicated concept but involves the formal use of sayings that mark one's membership of a particular group (Moko Mead & Grove 2001). The recitation of her pepeha allows Jo to connect with members of her tribe and her ancestral land.

In drawing attention to these concepts, Jo asserts a dimension of cultural embeddedness to home. An intimate link with land and kin is not uncommon among indigenous peoples (Jahnke 2002), suggesting that the experience of homelessness could be qualitatively different for indigenous people than for people of other ethno-cultural groups (Memmott et al. 2003; Kearns 2006). Indeed, a major contribution to the underlying ethos of the NZCEH has been its development of a framework for understanding Māori homelessness that connects a material basis (lack of adequate shelter) with degrees of disconnection from whānau (family), iwi (tribe) and tūrangawaewae. Their stance, as Jo explained, is expressed in the whakataukī (proverb) developed for the Coalition's slogan: ‘He tūrangawaewae kore, he wairua whare kore’, or, ‘if I don't have a place to stand in this land my spirit is lost’. This acknowledgement of the social and spiritual dimensions of homelessness for Māori was also extended to non-Māori, with the group perceiving that these culturally specific ideas were useful for articulating the more intangible aspects of home and homelessness.

Home as place

It is important to recognise that even though the participants' experience of home and homelessness was centrally focused on relationships with people and culture, their talk about home was also periodically linked with places of residence:

I've had periods in my life when I've lived physically in a place that hasn't been safe and I still would have referred to it as my home … it just happened that there were tensions within the walls (Kathryn).

Physical dwellings, in and of themselves, could fulfil certain senses of home for the participants. The privacy of four walls or the security of a locked door, for instance, achieved certain desirable components of a home. However, consistent with their emphasis on social connectedness, the group recognised that their emotional connections to dwellings were in large part conferred by the social relationships that occurred within them:

If someone said ‘where's your home?’ I would have to say that it's in two places. One is at home with my Mum in the house I grew up in … so for me, home is [physical address] in Plymouth, Devon … But my home in New Zealand is back in [location] … I do feel it's my home, but it's still missing my extended family connections (Kathryn).

Kathryn's talk resonates with the view of Massey (1992, p. 12), who writes that ‘social relations always have a spatial form and spatial content … a “place” is formed out of the particular set of social relations which interact at a particular location’. The house that Kathryn grew up in is a marker of home because it is the setting within which she experienced a formative period of her life. The continuing presence of her mother in that house sustains her emotional attachment to it, and conversely, diminishes her experience of home in her current residence. This theme of place-based social relationships and home as a ‘felt’ experience (Robinson 2011) was considered by Kathryn to have important implications for her sense of self. Kathryn had recently moved house, and it was important for her developing emotional connection to that place as home to have her family and friends visit her there:

Kathryn:

Once Mum's been over [from England], and maybe when I have children of my own, that will make home slightly more connected to my current [residence]. But it gets more homelike when people come and visit and they leave a little bit of themselves behind. It builds it. It makes it become home.

Craig:

And does it build your identity as well … in that people connect that place with you?

Kathryn:

Yeah absolutely. Dad now knows where I live and that creates, you know when I say ‘oh I can see [landmark]’, he goes ‘oh yeah’ (laughs).

When Kathryn's friends visit her in her new house, the social bonds between them are affirmed, but it is her residence that forms a locus for these bonds. Literature on place-based identity holds that dwellings are more than mere backgrounds for human activity. Instead, we develop a sense of self through a relation with our material environment just as much as through interpersonal interaction (Noble 2004). Dupuis & Thorns (1998) go further, arguing that home is a key locale through which people can work at attaining a sense of ontological security, which as Giddens (1990, p. 92) contends, has to do with a sense of self that is emotional rather than cognitive, and rooted deep within the unconscious. As a space of relative privacy and autonomy, home provides a secure base around which people can construct their identities (Dupuis & Thorns 1998). As Kathryn's talk indicates, home, for her, is thus neither the dwelling nor the feeling of belonging to a place but a ‘relation between the two’ (Blunt & Dowling 2006, p. 22).

The social exclusion perspective of the NZCEH links material inequalities, such as access to affordable housing, to the ability of individuals to participate fully in social and economic life. A house, in their view, provides a material basis for a sense of self, belonging and social connectedness, and in its widest sense, a degree of ontological security that scholars have long regarded as essential for human psychological well-being (Robinson 2011). This is apparent in the exchange between Kathryn and Craig below:

Kathryn:

I had a funny experience of buying a house and then had this aspiration to do it up, so got busy, and really, really loved it. But then the relationship I was in got very, very difficult. Knowing I had to uproot all that and move myself out of there was a decision I never thought I could have made. I moved out … but I took that piece of security and it wasn't the home that gave me that security it was actually myself.

Craig:

Well it's internalising something now isn't it, from an external support system to an internal self-belief [others agree].

For the NZCEH, experiencing home in this multidimensional way fortifies individuals and contributes to their ability to deal with life's hardships. This fusion between a physical dwelling and a sense of belonging, an understanding drawn from their own biographies, is the experience of home that they want for people who are homeless.

Practices of home

Researchers have noted that home does not exist but must be created, built or made, not only in a material sense, but also in a social and emotional way (Kellett & Moore 2003; Blunt & Dowling 2006). Some of the participants' comments invoked a notion of home as something that is practised, as evidenced in the following excerpt:

My young days were in a house where the walls were kind of elastic … we had people coming in and staying for a while and going and all that sort of stuff, I mean, it was just Mum and Dad's way of doing home really (Robert).

The walls of Robert's family home did not function as a solid barrier between his family and the community but were experienced as ‘elastic’, or malleable. His parents' way of ‘doing home’ was to open their house to others in need of material and emotional support. This simple practice of giving people a bed in their house was loaded with symbolic meaning that emphasised the value and dignity of people and recognised their need for community. Practices of home can be culturally specific and driven by underlying value frameworks. Robert's account above reflects a practice connected to a particular Christian faith, yet the ethic it articulates resonates strongly with the way that Jo talked about the Māori notion of manaakitanga:

When we talk about a definition [of homelessness], all of this adds to Māori spirituality, because looking after each other, it's not a physical responsibility, it's an actual spiritual responsibility, so it is about manaakitanga.

Manaakitanga, or reciprocal, unqualified caring and hospitality, highlights the importance placed on kinship ties in Māori culture by affirming the bonds of association and responsibility between people (Pere 1982). As Ritchie (1992, p. 78) puts it, in Māoridom, it is important to ‘support, to care for, be concerned about, to feed, shelter and nurture your kin, especially when they are in need’. When Jo describes the provision of housing as a ‘spiritual responsibility’, she firmly places the onus on society to recognise and address the needs of people who are homeless. These ideas that emphasise practices of home therefore work to communicate the ethos of the NZCEH and its attempt to theorise homelessness simultaneously as an issue of material lack (a housing discourse) with a significant other dimension relating to a sense of disconnection and disaffiliation (a more radical social exclusion discourse).

Negotiating homelessness within the policy domain

Before considering the participants' efforts to negotiate the field of homelessness policy, it is pertinent to make some observations about the development of policy more generally as a background for understanding the dynamics and agendas that were steering the Coalition's work. According to Kingfisher (2007), the process of policy-making involves, first, the interpretation of phenomena as problematic, which then must be recognised by policy-makers as legitimate, before finally being translated into a form that is able to be administered. The NZCEH was attempting to achieve all these policy steps simultaneously, attempting to define homelessness (interpret it) in such a way that would maximise the likelihood of legitimation (political recognition), as well as providing an operational framework for enumeration (an administratable form) and supporting appropriate service responses. In the following section we examine how the participants' attempted to renegotiate their constructions of home and homelessness in a more pragmatically driven discussion about homelessness policy. We then present two unresolved issues emerging from their discussion: the dilemma of street homelessness for definitions centred on housing, and the politics of homelessness policy.

Negotiating the framework

The group discussed how an essential aspect of the Coalition's early work was to determine a way of understanding homelessness that they could reasonably share as a group and that would also provide a suitable platform for their political advocacy (cf. Schiff 2003). They discussed how they initially adopted the Australian homelessness classification system (Chamberlain & Mackenzie 1992) as their preferred definitional framework. A key feature of the Australian framework is that it regards homelessness and inadequate housing as culturally relative concepts that reflect the housing practices of any given society. It is a cultural expectation in Australia that people will have access to a ‘minimum community standard’ of housing (Chamberlain & Mackenzie 1992, p. 290). This benchmark—a small, self-contained rental flat with reasonably secure tenure—enables various types of homelessness to be articulated, including primary homelessness (rough sleeping, squatting and living in cars and tents), secondary homelessness (temporary emergency accommodation) and tertiary homelessness (medium- to long-term residence in a boarding house). The fact that this framework had been operationalised by the Australian Bureau of Statistics to gather data on homelessness in Australia (Robinson 2011) was described by the participants as a major reason for adopting the framework in New Zealand. The almost total lack of numerical data about the prevalence of homelessness in New Zealand was seen as a significant gap that had allowed the issue to avoid policy attention, limiting the availability of resources that could be directed towards service provision.

Despite some misgivings that the framework ‘only really looks at housing’ (Kathryn), the participants stressed that the Coalition was committed to countering individualist explanations for homelessness, particularly those blaming people who are homeless for their lifestyle ‘choice’. In this regard, the Australian framework's conceptualisation of different types of homelessness was viewed positively:

When we took that definition we wanted the public to realise that we're not just talking about rough sleepers. Until that point it was generally accepted that that was the problem (Janis).

This view is consistent with structural explanations that emphasise the heterogeneity of the causes of homelessness and take a broader view of homelessness as degrees of housing need (Williams 2005). However, in the focus group discussion, it was revealed that the Coalition's reasons for adopting this framework also reflected elements of convenience. When the NZCEH was established, the Australian framework was already being used informally by many organisations concerned with homelessness and was regarded by them as a credible way of describing different types of homelessness. Adopting a common framework allowed actors a way to communicate more effectively:

[B]efore we adopted it there was a point in every meeting that you'd go to … everybody would just go back to the definition, what does homelessness mean? Everybody had a different opinion, and it was just tiresome because we didn't actually get anywhere (Janis).

The participants also argued that emphasising the housing dimension of homelessness would be politically advantageous for developing strategic relationships with community housing organisations.

Despite the advantages of this framework, the group talked about why they subsequently moved away from it. Infrastructural differences between New Zealand and Australia were seen to limit the operational utility of the framework in the local context. They also expressed concerns that a framework developed for the Australian context might not be suitable for conceptualising homelessness locally, particularly for capturing the social and cultural dimensions deemed critical by the NZCEH. Towards the end of 2008, increased media attention on homelessness and lobbying by the Coalition resulted in the establishment of a government working party to develop a framework for quantifying homelessness. The NZCEH, in its quest to influence this framework, consequently shifted away from its commitment to the Australian framework. In the focus group, the participants reconceptualised the Australian framework as a ‘stepping stone’ (Janis) for further development, viewing their role as one of ‘influencing the process that's happening at the moment’ (Kathryn).

Although excited by this opportunity to influence the local scene, the participants expressed caution about selecting a framework, worrying that a poor decision could lock New Zealand into a set of problematic policy constructs that would constrain thought and action in unknown ways and prove unsuccessful for addressing homelessness (cf. Schiff 2003). At the same time, the group argued that any definitional framework was likely to be inadequate for capturing the multidimensional nature of homelessness. They were also conscious that they could not afford to engage in endless conceptual reflection:

Craig:

The whole point of doing this is to say this isn't good enough for our society, homeless people are the most disadvantaged and this is a reflection on our society, we need to take some action.

Robert:

And governments can't actually see a way to end a problem unless they actually have the problem defined.

Pinning down an acceptable definitional framework was seen as a matter of some urgency for the group. A report commissioned by the NZCEH argued that:

Consensus on a sound definition is a basic building block for policy development and needs to be settled urgently. There is a danger that a prolonged debate over definition will perpetuate a sense of inertia in policy development and procrastination in strategic collaboration (Richards 2009, p. 10).

Despite the Coalition's commitment to viewing homelessness as an issue that is ‘absolutely more than bricks and mortar’ (Kathryn), the demands of this policy context ensured that a pragmatic focus on housing prevailed throughout the focus group discussions. However, the experiences of people living on the street served as a reminder of the complex meanings of home, and presented a recurrent dilemma for the group.

Dilemma of street homelessness

Throughout the discussions, a view of home as social and cultural connectedness continually arose. In relation to street homelessness, the group acknowledged that a sense of home, identity and belonging could occur in the absence of a physical dwelling because they had repeatedly observed this:

What I've been thinking about is the connection between home and community. What I see with the [homeless] guys that come into the [drop-in centre] is that their sense of home is the sense of community. That's what connects them and holds them together (Craig).

Some people who are homeless are socially isolated, and many are ostracised from their families, but being homeless does not preclude the ability to be socially, or indeed culturally, connected (Groot et al. 2011). The level of acceptance that people can gain from each other, ‘which is often lacking elsewhere’ (Janis), can contribute to the development of a street-based sense of home. It is not uncommon for people who are homeless to refer to each other as ‘family’ (Smith 2008) and, over time, to embrace being homeless as a self-identity (Snow & Anderson 1993). City streets and drop-in centres, like dwellings, are places that can become inscribed within a sense of self and belonging (cf. Massey 1992). However, this street-based sense of home presented a dilemma for the NZCEH:

It's people that make a home not the physical house [others agree] … I know you've got to have somewhere to physically live, but you might talk to some of those people who are homeless and it is about those mates that you're under the bridge with, that is about as close to home as you're going to get. I know this supports the theory that the homeless want to be homeless, but it shouldn't, you know. The public don't always understand what's brought people to that point … (Jo).

In attempting to be advocates for ending homelessness, the NZCEH confronted a string of problematic issues. Importantly, the group recognised that for some people who are homeless, home can be located on the street. However, homelessness was a problem that the Coalition is committed to ending, and street homelessness, as an extreme state of social and material exclusion, was unacceptable for the NZCEH because of its serious consequences for people's health and dignity. An emphasis on human dignity had the effect of allowing room for people to be self-determining with respect to their lives and living situation (Parsell & Parsell 2012). However, allowing for this required acknowledgement that people have agency, which in turn invoked an individualistic perspective that risked supporting the notion of homelessness as a lifestyle choice. This conceptualisation was deemed unacceptable for the group because it was politically problematic, potentially undermining their attempts to legitimise homelessness as an issue requiring government policy. Ultimately then, a focus on housing was considered most strategic for meeting the group's political objectives despite the fact that positioning homelessness within a housing discourse was considered inadequate for framing the experience of people living on the street, i.e. those who are arguably most likely to be blamed for their misfortune.

Politics of homelessness policy

Policy often appeals to the language of scientific reason, representing itself as apolitical and pragmatic; in short: ‘a mere tool that serves to unite means and ends … a legal-rational way of getting things done’ (Wedel et al. 2005, p. 37). However, both the processes and products of policy are cultural and historical constructions that serve to reproduce, modify or contest particular cultural formations and power relationships within a given context (Daly 1996; Shore & Wright 1997; Schiff 2003; Wedel et al. 2005; Kingfisher 2007). The group demonstrated an acute awareness of policy-making as marked by power struggles and driven by political exigencies. Pressure to settle for a definitional framework that could be operationalised for enumeration meant that the Coalition's commitment to including a social exclusion discourse was often set aside in favour of a housing one. In a context where homelessness services were severely under-resourced, opting for a housing framework was seen as the price of political exigency:

Kathryn:

In terms of the definitional stuff, you know there are reasons aren't there, you're defining something A) to be able to gain the size or … to be able to describe something and then the other thing is the response and … the monitoring [of outcomes] …

Jo:

It's not just for statistics but a social response […]

Janis:

Yeah but the people that have the money need that information, I mean this is why we're doing it.

Kathryn:

Yeah, yeah that's right [others agree].

There was, however, evidence that some deeper discourses were influencing the group's acceptance of what was possible in the current context. Some of the discussion focused on the pending national election and the predicted change of government. Faced with a future political climate that looked decidedly more conservative, the NZCEH was strategically rethinking its approach:

I think it's crucial particularly if the National Government comes in that … we're not just seen as left wing do-gooders … this is a very high needs service user group. Although there aren't many of them, they are costing us a fortune and whether you are right wing or left wing, you still have a responsibility to do something about this (Janis).

In this socio-cultural context, the group perceived that economically driven arguments stressing the cost-effectiveness of housing provision to address homelessness were likely to have the most currency (Shinn 2007; Cronley 2010). In this respect, a recent study that attempted to quantify the cost of long-term street homelessness to public services (Committee for Auckland 2008) was considered timely. Participants talked about the need ‘to be smarter about the language we use depending on who's pulling the purse strings' (Jo), claiming that ‘the NZCEH as an entity is politically neutral, essentially’ (Kathryn). However, given that social policy can never be value-free (Wedel et al. 2005; Kingfisher 2007) and that the Coalition's underlying commitment to a social exclusion discourse stresses ideals that are fairly left-leaning, these claims could be viewed as somewhat conflicting.¹

It is necessary, we argue, to dig deeper. Some researchers posit that ideologies of home are always linked to ideologies of homelessness (Passaro 1996; Seal 2007). A more radical analysis would consider the social, economic and political context that is shaping homelessness policy in New Zealand, as well as the way that individuals experience their relationships to place (Manzo 2003; Wedel et al. 2005). Framing homelessness as a housing issue cannot account for why some people are more likely to become and remain homeless (Passaro 1996). In New Zealand, these people appear to be mainly Māori, male and single (Leggatt-Cook 2007); people whose homelessness may be partly attributed to their multiple structural disadvantage (Somerville 1998; May 2000).

It is reasonable, then, to argue that a sense of home—whether dwelling- or street-based—is shaped as much by experiences of exclusion as by belonging. Research on home, however, typically paints it in nostalgic and utopian terms, neglecting the way that home can disappoint and aggravate (Perkins & Thorns 1999; Moore 2000). This reflects a dominant cultural expectation that we will experience our residences as positive; an expectation that ironically does not fit with the experience of socially marginalised groups such as people who are homeless (Scanlon & Adlam 2008; Parsell & Parsell 2012). When homeless people move into accommodation:

[T]hey are confronted with the myth, which they bought into, that we as practitioners bought into, that this would magically transform their lives and solve the problems we had labelled as ‘homelessness’ (Seal 2007, p. 123).

For many people who are homeless, the experience of being rehoused does not meet their physical, psychological or social expectations of home; they move out or get evicted, and in doing so, experience another instance of failure. Yet this failure is typically framed in individualist terms as their failure, as opposed to the failure of the residence to deliver the dream of fulfilment it promises. Both homelessness and home persist as complex problems, resisting commonsense explanations and policy solutions.

Conclusion

Advocating for homelessness can require pragmatism and strategic compromise. When asked to talk freely about the meanings of home and homelessness, the group demonstrated a conceptually rich and deeply personal understanding of the nature of home and its relation to people, culture and places, including physical dwellings. Despite recognising the ontological security provided by a house, the participants remained ambivalent about the ability of a housing discourse to adequately capture the full experience of homelessness, especially for people who had developed a sense of home in relation to the street. However, the perceived realities of the policy domain and a need to maximise political legitimacy of the issue provided the group with sufficient justification for moving away from their biographically informed accounts to promote the pragmatic conflation of home with dwelling.

Ideologically, the NZCEH clearly privileged a social exclusion discourse over a housing discourse, but it continually danced between the two in its talk, at times driven by a deep understanding of home, at others by the realities of policy. Solutions to homelessness will always occur within politicised contexts and the Coalition was, after all, driven by a fundamental commitment ‘to get homelessness on the government's policy agenda’ (one of its aims). In order to be regarded as an authoritative voice about homelessness and fulfil its function as an advocacy organisation, the NZCEH recognised that it must be prepared to engage in dialogue with policy-makers.

This paper presents a case study of one organisation in one specific context. However, the findings extend well beyond the case discussed. On the one hand they offer guidance for those involved in social activism engaging with state policy in all spheres. It suggests that there will always be tensions between pragmatics and ideology and between rich conceptualisation and narrow policy constructs, but that a group can work in both spaces at once if it accepts the tensions and secures the internal trust necessary to cope with them.

More specifically, the case has broad implications for debates about homelessness elsewhere. The paper draws attention to the difficulties and potential pitfalls in negotiating the discursive field of homelessness within the policy domain. Home is a complicated concept (Moore 2000; Blunt & Dowling 2006); more so, when it is considered in relation to street homelessness (Snow & Anderson 1993; Smith 2008). Likewise, homelessness policy development is inherently fraught, with competing discourses framing homelessness, and solutions for it, in different ways. Definitional classifications that can generate numerical estimates of the scope and varieties of homelessness have important implications for driving policy development (Minnery & Greenhalgh 2007). However, it is equally important that advocacy groups continue to think critically about home and homelessness and explore ways of challenging policy-makers to engage more effectively with a discourse of social exclusion. This must include a consideration of the underlying political ideologies shaping constructions of home and homelessness and the material implications for the lives of people who are homeless (Passaro 1996; Schiff 2003; Kingfisher 2007; Seal 2007; Shinn 2007; Scanlon & Adlam 2008). For advocacy organisations, home may be most usefully conceptualised as ‘houses with elastic walls’, a metaphor that could inform practical efforts to recognise and address both the material and social needs of people who are homeless.

Notes

1. Since this research was conducted, Statistics New Zealand has formally adopted a framework for New Zealand. This framework does acknowledge the implications of housing status for belonging and community but remains focused on enumerating housing status (Statistics New Zealand 2009).