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Housing Inequalities, Crime, and the Criminal Justice System: The Shifting Context in England and Wales since the 1980s

Emily Gray, Phil Mike Jones, and Stephen Farrall

in Tracing the Relationship between Inequality, Crime and Punishment: Space, Time and Politics

One of the first steps Margaret Thatcher’s government took following their election in 1979 was to introduce legislation that enabled sitting council tenants to buy their council homes. This chapter ... More

One of the first steps Margaret Thatcher’s government took following their election in 1979 was to introduce legislation that enabled sitting council tenants to buy their council homes. This chapter assesses the legacy of this policy on the experiences of homelessness and contact with the criminal justice system of two cohorts of UK citizens. Using longitudinal studies of people born in 1958 and 1970, the authors explore how policies intended to turn council tenants into property owners, may have also increased the risks of homelessness, and contact with the criminal justice system for others as well as subsequent generations. The authors assess how legislative changes can shape the lives of citizens, and highlight some of the unintended consequences of the ‘right to buy’ policy. Our chapter, therefore is essentially about the investigation of the outcomes of radical system deregulation. Our chapter draws upon concepts derived from life-course studies and historical institutionalist thinking in order to understand in-depth how radical policy changes may shape and alter the lives of ordinary citizens.Less

Trends in homelessness in Denmark, Finland and Ireland

Mike Allen, Lars Benjaminsen, Eoin O’Sullivan, and Nicholas Pleace

in Ending Homelessness?: The Contrasting Experiences of Denmark, Finland and Ireland

Chapter 4 outlines trends in recorded homelessness in the three countries between about 2008 and 2018. The chapter first explores in some detail how homelessness is measured in each of the three ... More

Chapter 4 outlines trends in recorded homelessness in the three countries between about 2008 and 2018. The chapter first explores in some detail how homelessness is measured in each of the three countries as the three countries use a variety of methodologies to measure homelessness and it is important that the strengths and limitations of these different approaches are understood, particularly in relation to their comparability. Having explored the full range of data on homelessness in each country, we then focus on those living rough, in emergency accommodation and in accommodation for the homeless, and data on these forms of homelessness are presented for the three countries.Less

Explanations: welfare and politics matter

Mike Allen, Lars Benjaminsen, Eoin O’Sullivan, and Nicholas Pleace

in Ending Homelessness?: The Contrasting Experiences of Denmark, Finland and Ireland

The impacts of welfare policies and political choices are explored in this chapter. Comprehensive and generous welfare systems that encompass housing, health and other social services, as well as ... More

The impacts of welfare policies and political choices are explored in this chapter. Comprehensive and generous welfare systems that encompass housing, health and other social services, as well as income supports, provide important buffers that lessen the likelihood that people will experience homelessness. The evidence from social democratic welfare regimes such as Denmark is that those who do experience homelessness despite such developed welfare systems tend to have a higher rate of psychosocial difficulties compared to the general population, and this is also likely to be the case in Finland. It was traditionally the case in Ireland, but has become less so in recent years.Less

Edge

Alison J. Murray Levine

in Vivre Ici: Space, Place and Experience in Contemporary French Documentary

This chapter presents three films that deal with homelessness and migration: Qu’ils reposent en révolte (Sylvain George, 2011) about migrants in Calais; Au bord du monde/On the Edge of the World ... More

This chapter presents three films that deal with homelessness and migration: Qu’ils reposent en révolte (Sylvain George, 2011) about migrants in Calais; Au bord du monde/On the Edge of the World (Claus Drexel, 2014) on homeless people in central Paris; and La Permanence/On Call (Alice Diop, 2016), which depicts a free medical clinic in Bobigny. In all of these films, the protagonists live at the metaphorical edge of society, and some walk other edges as well, between life and death, between physical and mental illness and health. These three directors explore what happens at these edges, far outside the realm of direct experience for most documentary film viewers. They follow characters to physical and geographical edges—national borders, riverbanks, beaches, and roadsides—and invite viewers to tiptoe up to those edges and feel the danger they pose. The films create film spaces, if ephemeral ones, where these rootless individuals do belong, where they can emerge as individuals, and where there is a potential for experiential and ecological connection with the viewer.Less

Housing precarity and advanced marginality in the UK

Kelly Bogue

in The Divisive State of Social Policy: The 'Bedroom Tax', Austerity and Housing Insecurity

This chapter presents concluding remarks about the impacts of the Bedroom Tax. It reflects on the processes through which housing insecurity is generated and how this is playing a central role in ... More

This chapter presents concluding remarks about the impacts of the Bedroom Tax. It reflects on the processes through which housing insecurity is generated and how this is playing a central role in increasing urban marginality. It does so by drawing on studies about rising housing precarity and homelessness to consider how both the social and private housing sectors have been responding to reductions in housing benefit. This chapter argues that we need to re-consider how and in what ways the struggles over housing are being played out at the local level and how this can generate divisions in and between different groups. Particularly when people are re-negotiating a welfare state that is undergoing deep systematic reorganisation. It considers the relationship between austerity policies and their role in creating political dissatisfaction with the state of UK politics. Especially in areas where the full impact of austerity measures have been felt.Less

Youth homelessness policy in wales: improving housing rights and addressing geographical wrongs

Peter K. Mackie

in Critical Geographies of Childhood and Youth: Contemporary Policy and Practice

Over the past decade youth homelessness has received increasing political priority in the UK and across much of the developed world. Focussing on Wales, where a comprehensive review of homelessness ... More

Over the past decade youth homelessness has received increasing political priority in the UK and across much of the developed world. Focussing on Wales, where a comprehensive review of homelessness policy is currently being undertaken, this chapter explores the impacts of homelessness legislation in Wales on the social and physical spaces occupied by homeless young people. Informed by an understanding of key geographical concepts of place, networks and mobility – as well as sociological understandings of power and agency – it considers the experiences of all homeless young people, not only those who occupy the streets. The critique draws upon the author's own experiences of undertaking interviews with homeless young people during several research studies over the past four years. While the chapter centres on Wales the discussion has implications for youth homelessness policies elsewhere.Less

India’s Human Settlement and Micro Living Environment

Ramprasad Sengupta

in Ecological Limits and Economic Development

The chapter discusses the population dynamics and future prospect of India’s population growth till around the middle of the present century. In this context it has analysed the regional pattern of ... More

The chapter discusses the population dynamics and future prospect of India’s population growth till around the middle of the present century. In this context it has analysed the regional pattern of demographic transition as driven by the dynamics of fertility preference in the different regions of India and has examined how poverty and gender-power relationship have influenced the fertility behavior. The discussion refers to the new poverty line and the poverty ratios as per Tendulkar Committee Report as well and its implcations. Besides, the chapter also describes the micro environmental living condition of households in India with special references to housing space, homelessness, drinking water, sanitation and urbanization. The chapter has further extended the discussion in the urban context to the problems of slums and slum improvement policy in India. It concludes by discussing the historical dynamics of population policy and programme of India including its current state.Less

Rediscovering Homelessness

in Citizen Hobo: How a Century of Homelessness Shaped America

This chapter describes the rediscovery of homelessness in 1980s America. The rediscovery of homelessness did not simply reflect the stunning growth of poverty and the declining fortunes of the ... More

This chapter describes the rediscovery of homelessness in 1980s America. The rediscovery of homelessness did not simply reflect the stunning growth of poverty and the declining fortunes of the American working class since the heyday of the family-wage pact. The discourse of homelessness was itself part of a larger struggle to represent the new economic and social realities of the era, to cast such abstract problems as faltering economic growth, labor market restructuring, and increased class stratification as the dramatic loss of home. With their ability to arouse pity and inspire protectionist intervention, homeless women, especially those with dependent children, soon replaced Maharidge and Williamson's Forgotten Men as the most recognizable emblems of homeless victimization. In addition to long-term economic and labor market changes, experts also identified the contraction of the government safety net as playing a central role in homelessness.Less

Homelessness and Self-Disclosure: Evans Chan’s “Minor” Cinema

Hector Rodriguez

in Postcolonialism, Diaspora, and Alternative Histories: The Cinema of Evans Chan

This chapter examines Evans Chan’s cerebral and personal film The Map of Sex and Love with reference to the concepts raised by Georg Lukacs in his seminal The Theory of the Novel. It is a film marked ... More

This chapter examines Evans Chan’s cerebral and personal film The Map of Sex and Love with reference to the concepts raised by Georg Lukacs in his seminal The Theory of the Novel. It is a film marked by homelessness: the impending changes in Hong Kong’s physical landscape give viewers a sense of precariousness of life. The film’s manifold intertextual references embrace philosophy, Cantonese and Western operas, classical Chinese cinema, and English language poetry. As with the other works of Evans Chan, there is a strong conviction that narrative form should treat the absurd as a necessary condition of meaning.Less

Homelessness

Keith Dowding

in It's the Government, Stupid!: How Governments Blame Citizens for Their Own Policies

This chapter discusses the nature of homelessness from rough sleeping to lack of secure accommodation. It examines changing government policy over the past fifty years. Governments have got out of ... More

This chapter discusses the nature of homelessness from rough sleeping to lack of secure accommodation. It examines changing government policy over the past fifty years. Governments have got out of the business of building and renting low-cost houses, ended rent control, and pursued fiscal policies encouraging not only home ownership and second homes, but a new rentier class. Tax incentives encourage buying to let or even leaving property empty for investment purposes. This pushes up house prices, creating a generation who have little prospect of ever owning their own home. It has also created insecure and transient housing for the poor and a tranche of rough sleepers with no roof over their heads. The chapter investigates this process in the USA, UK and Australia, contrasting with a case study of how Finland has successfully dealt with its homelessness problem.Less

Early housing pathways

Brian Portley

in Immigration and housing in the Republic of Ireland

Chapter 3 places emphasis on the early housing pathways of migrants. This chapter explores how migrants’ right to housing impact on their living conditions. This provides the context for a discussion ... More

Chapter 3 places emphasis on the early housing pathways of migrants. This chapter explores how migrants’ right to housing impact on their living conditions. This provides the context for a discussion of the reasons migrants’ had for leaving home and the difficulties they encountered during their initial engagement with Ireland’s housing market. This analysis of the relationship between structure, agency and power is also applied to a discussion of migrants’ initial engagement with housing providers when attempting to find accommodation in Ireland. Next, this chapter examines discourses that act as barriers to finding accommodation, including the impact of stigma on migrant identity. Finally, discourses of homelessness and their capacity to determine policy responses to the increasing and diversified incidence of migrant homelessness are discussed. This analysis centres on the interaction of migrants with homeless service providers and how both groups reacted to the discourses surrounding legislation that proscribes recently arrived migrants from receiving any meaningful form of social protection.Less

Domesticity in Extremis: Homemaking by the Unsheltered

Susan Fraiman

in Extreme Domesticity: A View from the Margins

Calls on non-fictional works across several genres—journalistic accounts, a memoir, ethnographies, and Marc Singer’s film Dark Days (2000)—to explore domesticity in the context of homelessness. ... More

Calls on non-fictional works across several genres—journalistic accounts, a memoir, ethnographies, and Marc Singer’s film Dark Days (2000)—to explore domesticity in the context of homelessness. Argues that domesticity is not absent for this population so much as it is broken, embattled, and reinvented. Looks at homeless individuals and communities who struggle to improvise such domestic elements as safety, privacy, storage, routine, intimacy, and kinship.Less

Gentrification, Displacement, and the Right to the City

Jan Lin

in Taking Back the Boulevard: Art, Activism, and Gentrification in Los Angeles

Examines the impacts of the sharpening gentrification process in Northeast Los Angeles and its socioeconomic and racial overtones as immigrant working class Latino/a families are increasingly ... More

Examines the impacts of the sharpening gentrification process in Northeast Los Angeles and its socioeconomic and racial overtones as immigrant working class Latino/a families are increasingly threatened by displacement through rent increases, evictions, and socially traumatic uprooting of multi-family networks. Gentrification is tied to neoliberal local state efforts in Los Angeles to incentivize private investment through urban policy strategies like transit-oriented development, transit villages and small lot housing development. I argue the creative frontier of urban restructuring in Northeast LA also generates social violence expressing capitalism’s tendency to foster “accumulation by dispossession” that has been countered by neighborhood “right to the city” movements. I examine the rise of the urban social movements like Friends of Highland Park and Northeast LA Alliance that advocate for the rights of those threatened by housing displacement and eviction, address community and environmental impacts of new high-density housing projects, and campaign for more socially just housing and urban planning policies in Los Angeles. There is also examination of the plight of the homeless and rehabilitating gang membersLess

Work and Respect in Chennai

Giulia Mazza

in Our Most Troubling Madness: Case Studies in Schizophrenia Across Cultures

In India, relatively few of those who are mentally ill live without their families. Yet some do, either because they are abandoned or because they flee. The Banyan is a non-governmental organization ... More

In India, relatively few of those who are mentally ill live without their families. Yet some do, either because they are abandoned or because they flee. The Banyan is a non-governmental organization founded in 1993 to rescue poor, abandoned, homeless women with mental health issues. Since its inception, the Banyan has treated over two thousand persons with mental illness. They bring in women who are often too incapacitated to remember their own names, and they care for them and treat them and teach them to work. They provide food, clothing, shelter, medication, general healthcare, therapeutic activities, and occupational training–all for free. They have been able to return over a thousand of them to their natal homes. Its remarkable success arises in part from the way these families understand the problems created by illness: first and foremost as failure to work, not as an inner experience with symptoms of distressing voices. This chapter illustrates this process through the life of a woman with schizophrenia abandoned by her family.Less