Fostering Pathways Out of Homelessness: Choreographies of Change-Making in the City of Tshwane

ABSTRACT

Finding pathways out of street homelessness in the City of Tshwane, South Africa, brought together major academic and community-based institutions as well as local government. This article reflects on the collaborative processes used between 2014 and 2020 and analyses the efforts needed to succeed. It considers the challenges faced and demonstrates that a carefully choreographed approach is key to determine common platforms from which to address street homelessness through a human-centred approach. It concludes with the idea that the will to reduce street homelessness is key and should triumph over narrow party political and personal interests. The article reflects engaged scholarship and seeks to contribute to critical policy discourse, suggesting the notion of “choreographies of change-making”.

KEYWORDS:

• homelessness
• engaged scholarship
• critical policy discourse
• choreography
• change-making

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 The City of Tshwane is the metropolitan municipality in which Pretoria also belongs. It is the administrative capital city of the Republic of South Africa.

2 The Tshwane Homelessness Forum is a stakeholder forum consisting of non-profit organisations (NPOs), community-based organisations, faith-based organisations, researchers, homeless and former homeless individuals and city officials. The Forum is a registered non-profit company.

3 The authors of this article were the co-leaders of the research team that is described here.

4 Community Solutions, led by Rosanne Haggerty in New York City, became one of our key global partners, demonstrating that homelessness was indeed solvable (see Community Solutions 2021).

5 “Political” here refers to party political discontinuities; organisational politics both in municipalities and in the non-profit sector; as well as the politics of positionality proximate to resources.

6 The title of the second phase of the project, supported by the National Research Foundation, is Pathways out of Homelessness: Going deeper. A Trans-Disciplinary Research Project in the City of Tshwane.

7 Three statements by the National Homeless Network can be viewed at https://homelessnessandcovid-19.weebly.com/national-response.html. It provides information about the Network, requests intervention by the South African Human Rights Commission, and seeks to address homeless concerns during COVID-19, with both the Presidency and the National Disaster Command Team.

8 Since the construction of this article, the Pathways Operational Centre (POC) was launched as a dedicated institutional mechanism to support the sector involved in implementing the City”s Homeless Policy. The POC is hosted in the Unit for Street Homelessness at the University of Pretoria, but works closely with local and provincial government, the Tshwane Homelessness Network and many NPOs.

9 This plan, jointly held by the City of Tshwane and the Tshwane Homelessness Forum, was accepted on Saturday 28 March 2020 and titled “Covid-19: Proposed Plan for Physical Distancing, Social Isolation & Reduced Risk for Homeless Persons in Tshwane”.

10 The process that unfolded once a joint plan was adopted between the City of Tshwane and the Tshwane Homelessness Forum, is described in the research report titled “Homelessness and Covid-19 in the City of Tshwane” (De Beer and Hugo 2021).

11 Also see the article by Renkin elsewhere in this special collection, focusing on the COVID-19 response to street homelessness in the City of Tshwane.