A gateway to normality

Before my first steps in psychology (via a conversion course at Birkbeck, University of London) I managed a grassroots winter night shelter project. My degree had been in Theology, Youth and Community Work, and I spent several years in various roles for Rentstart: a North Surrey-based homelessness charity that supports people into the private rented sector. I heard people's stories about their pathways into homelessness, and difficulties moving on. I saw the impact of life-course events on teenagers and people experiencing homelessness.

I studied widely, valuing a multidisciplinary approach. Psychology has largely focused on describing the experience of people who become homeless, rather than ways that behaviour may have led to homelessness. Homelessness research had typically been split into structural factors (poverty, housing markets, employment), or an individual factors (health needs, addiction, gambling, relationship breakdowns). Housing Studies academic David Clapham (2003) illustrated that all of these factors played a part in people's entries into homelessness, and that the nature of these experiences were not homogenous. Clapham's approach considers homelessness pathways to be episodic, containing multiple structural and individual factors in varying orders. That's the conception of homelessness now broadly used among researchers, and which I have taken into my PhD: the pathways approach.

Here, I will apply that approach to qualitative studies with people who have experienced, or who are experiencing, homelessness (PEH). In constructing a meaning of 'home', we typically rely on our experience of home rather than without home. But there's a richness and clarity of meaning we can glean from circumstances once we no longer have access to them. So what insights can PEH share into home and their place on the pathway to having, or not having, one?

Common themes

From the perspective of PEH, 'home' tends to mean safety and security from both external and internal factors, reduced stigmatisation and a greater sense of self-respect, and the ability to engage normally with society (Davidson et al., 2021; Mabhala & Yohannes, 2019; Mayock et al., 2013; Stonehouse et al., 2021; Sylvestre et al., 2018). Let's explore these themes through several UK-based qualitative studies.

In the field of stigma, social psychology insights have highlighted the challenges faced by discrimination (Major & O'Brien, 2005), and even being linguistically categorised as 'homeless' (Walter et al., 2015). During a study by Mabhala and Yohannes (2019), who interviewed PEH in Chester, one participant described the difficulty in facing stigma from both general violent members of public and well-meaning stakeholders as she recounted multiple times in which she had been attacked… yet she was the one most likely to be moved to a different area or to receive anti-social behaviour orders. Another participant recounted experiencing violence despite being a child. Attacks are not limited to bodily abuse – another participant reported that their tent was set on fire. If you have a home, perhaps you take it for granted as 'normal' that you are not going to face this kind of stigma, victimisation, and insecurity.

Home can be seen to represent a gateway to normality; a place where opportunities begin.

Two qualitative studies in Scotland with people who were sleeping rough (Davidson et al., 2021) found mental and physical health challenges; feeling unsafe; facing violence; turning to drugs and alcohol; perceiving relationships as precarious; mistrusting support services and peers. Here's where the pathways approach comes in: these studies were longitudinal. Across three timepoints – from temporary accommodation to a permanent tenancy – two participants, a couple, could be observed to gain greater order, contentedness, and hope. At the final interview they were discussing systems for their finances, and success in managing drug and alcohol dependencies that had developed while rough sleeping. Another participant gained new expectations for his life and opportunities. Despite participants describing the difficulty of progressing alongside the trauma of previous homelessness experiences, home for them offered something key – a fresh start.

Once they had achieved a permanent tenancy, those participants were able to access mental health support and manage their needs. Home could be seen as a means of regulating mental health needs, and a base from which to connect to appropriate support. Most evidence suggests that pre-existing mental health struggles are common, which are then aggravated by homelessness (Fitzpatrick et al., 2013; Pattison & McCarthy, 2020). Participants in Mabhala and Yohannes' (2019) study described the anguish of living on the streets having led to suicidal thoughts and suicide attempts, as well as turning to risky substances in order to cope with their aggravated mental conditions. One participant described how homelessness rendered other courses of action besides drugs and alcohol implausible due to its restricting of his ability to think properly: 'When you homeless you can't think, you can't do anything, the best thing people do is to get pissed get drunk and drugs just to get by' (p.14).

Again a pathways approach can illuminate how stigma can function over time to maintain the powerlessness of groups (Bos et al., 2013). PEH are pulled ever further from society by stigma, exclusion, and the search for ways to cope with time living without a home. One participant Mayock and colleagues (2013) met two years apart spoke about the homelessness drug scene disparagingly at age 17, yet by 19 recounted how he 'became one of them' (p.449). Other participants felt disqualified from participation in other aspects of society, such as employment. The absence of the structure and security of home can create an environment in which people are more prone to unhealthy and damaging behaviours (Bramley & Fitzpatrick, 2018; Davidson et al., 2021).

PEH are acutely aware of public stigmatisation, and they internalise that discrimination (Bos et al., 2013). The ingrained social stigma placed on people without places to live is so pervasive that it was even found by Sylvestre et al. (2018) to occur from people living in hostels towards other people living in hostels. This is reflected by Stonehouse et al. (2021) whose findings regarding PEH's self-affirming beliefs of fitting in with a society were exclusively compatible with being perceived as private renters. In Mayock and colleague's (2013) study, on the topic of hopes for the future, participants expressed fairly mundane life goals – one listed a flat, small amount of money, a girlfriend, and children.

Home, then, can be seen to represent a gateway to normality; a place where opportunities begin.

Can you be homeless and also have a home?

Although many scholars have considered homeless to be the opposite of home (See Batterham, 2019), some have disputed the term homelessness and claimed it as a misnomer or overextended categorisation. Instead, they might break it down using terms such as houselessness, or rooflessness, and point to evidence of people 'home-making' despite lacking in secure accommodation (Lenhard et al., 2021). Nózka (2020) explored the meaning of home for PEH in Polish cities, finding that people created environments in sheltered areas such as abandoned buildings and under bridges that were organised like 'homes,' with cooking areas and decorations. They expressed a fondness and sense of familiarity with these places. Lenhard et al. (2021) posited that such instances of home-making, as well as community building, warrant attention as meanings of home which extend beyond accommodation.

It's rare that one transitions from homelessness to home-ownership, and competition for secure social housing renders it an impossibly long wait for many.

Again, if we look at pathways we see a slightly different picture. While people experiencing homelessness can indeed develop a sense of belonging and community within their environments, this is often tinged with mistrust of peers and a desire to escape the community (Mayock et al., 2013; Mayock & Parker, 2020). Some PEH express no desire to change their lives rough sleeping – they create a sense of normality within their situations. But this is often due to disillusionment with possible support measures or alternatives, as we can see from longitudinal studies. In the Davidson et al. (2021) research, one participant initially hid from the support workers before trusting them and accepting support, and two participants say they have accepted their situation at the time of their first interview, yet are pleased to be in stable accommodation during the follow up interview.  The researchers noted, poignantly, that he hated yet missed his street community (p.693).

An opposite experience to finding home without having accommodation is living in accommodation yet still feeling homeless. The label 'hidden homelessness' encompasses unsatisfactory living conditions such as temporary stays in hostels and shelters, as well as 'sofa-surfing'. In a survey of 2,011 young people aged 16-25 undertaken with a group thought to be reasonably representative of the UK, Clarke (2016) found that due to homelessness, 26 per cent of respondents had slept rough and 35 per cent had sofa surfed. These figures suggest that hidden homelessness could be underrepresented in official statistics.

Highlighting that contradiction of having a home and not, McCarthy (2018) explored the meaning of home for hostel users. Despite residing in a building, participants and researchers still understood their experience as having 'become homeless', and times before these events were looked on with nostalgia. Participants did try to recreate home within the hostel, with importance placed on the forging of quasi-familial relationships. But a tension and fragility remained – they didn't feel that home had been truly formed.

That tension is important when we weigh up whether to conceptualise being without accommodation as 'houselessness', or to stick with the term 'homelessness'. 'Houselessness' runs the risk of excluding people living in hidden homelessness, and perpetuating the idea that people without a secure and safe place to live do not need one in order to feel at home. While houselessness valuably acknowledges the agency of individuals experiencing homelessness, not wanting to deny dignity and the ability to create meaning in the face of a lack of resource, it teeters around overemphasising this agency. The grim reality is that PEH are not provided with adequate resources to form any semblance of the home they would most likely want.

The revolving door

In the UK, housing isn't set up in a way in which allows the least secure people access to the most secure spaces. It's rare that one transitions from homelessness to home-ownership, and competition for secure social housing renders it an impossibly long wait for many. Amidst limited social housing the main option that those faced with homelessness are offered, particularly young people, is attempting to fight their way into the private rented sector (Mabhala & Yohannes, 2019; Mayock et al., 2013).

The instability of the PRS and lack of choice that many UK young adults have in engaging with it due to the inaccessibility of home-ownership has led to the term 'Generation Rent', with research demonstrating both the high costs of accommodation and the lack of freedom to properly express a sense of home (McKee et al., 2017; Watt, 2020). These factors are further aggravated by levels of inequality within PRS engagement: people with less wealth or lower income face greater transience and risk in among tenancies (Hoolachan et al., 2017; Soaita & McKee, 2019).

When interviewed about their experiences living in the PRS (Soaita & McKee, 2019), young adults tend to describe the constant awareness that they may have to move into a new property, citing the numerous times they had already done so. In such transience, participants were reluctant to collect furniture or decorations that they wanted, instead attempting to create a sense of home via more moveable and temporary objects. Furthermore, participants described their limitations when it came to breakages or wear and tear, contrasting the array of choice involved in fixing elements of a self-owned residence to weighing up what to ask a landlord permission to do or change. One participant described a door lock which was functional yet unstable as a concerning example of this tension.

A consideration we have as support workers at Rentstart, when supporting clients into shared private rented accommodation, is the relationship dynamics of the potential household. For many accessing the PRS without support there is uncertainty about who potential sharers will be (Wilkinson & Ortega-Alcázar, 2019). Furthermore, UK rented accommodation is relatively small and often maximises the number of bedrooms at the expense of living rooms, meaning tenants can be confined to one room (Soaita & McKee, 2019). With one or many of these factors likely to be at play, PRS tenants face further spatial and relational restriction in their ability to create 'home'.

Far from being a natural exit route from homelessness, the PRS is among the most common of living tenures which proceed homelessness, and is even cited by research as a cause (Moore, 2017). Even if someone experiencing homelessness were to overcome the entry barriers of credit checks, high costs, and guaranteeing rent that the PRS entails and find suitable accommodation within it, they would be doing so in the most unstable and insecure area of the housing market, particularly for people in a position of low wealth or income.

As well as issues accessing security within housing markets, studies also show that feelings of insecurity developed while homeless persist even if people get safely housed (Stonehouse et al., 2021). Structural factors interplay with individual factors enhanced by the experience of homelessness, to make it common for people to be stuck in cycles, going back into homelessness should they make it out (Bramley & Fitzpatrick, 2018; Davidson et al., 2021; Mayock & Parker, 2020). This revolving door of homelessness highlights the importance of establishing stability in home.

The meaning of home

The pathways of PEH indicate the importance of home as key to their successful exit of homelessness. Home, as an achievable concept during experiences of homelessness, can be seen as incomplete and unstable. People can and will strive for structure, organisation, and relationships to give them a concept of home. However, it is largely untenable for home to be fully realised while homeless. Home, as a nostalgic past sentiment or as an attainable future goal for PEH, offers safety, security, agency. Home is integration with society, and a chance to fulfil goals and establish opportunities that revolve around more than immediate survival.

About the author

Laura Phillips-Farmer is in the first year of a PhD in the psychological sciences department at Birkbeck, University of London, under the supervision of Professor Fiona Tasker. [email protected]

My project will take a mixed methods approach featuring interviews and analysis of secondary data from homelessness charities. People often report family breakdown to charities, including the ones I've worked for, as one of the principal reasons for their homelessness: this is not reflected as much in the research. I hope that my families focus through a life course lens will be effective in exploring and linking up previously well-investigated factors and building on the pathways approach to homelessness.

References 

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