Study notes on academic ideas about homelessness: an illustration

Study notes on academic ideas about homelessness: an illustration

Academic ideas are bolded

Kaylene Zaretzky, Paul Flatau, Bridget Spicer, Elizabeth Conroy & Lucy Burns (2017) What drives the high health care costs of the homeless?, Housing Studies, 32:7, 931-947, DOI: 10.1080/02673037.2017.1280777.

“The extant research suggests a number of important relationships between health status and homelessness. In terms of mental health relationships, the literature suggests that the prevalence of mental health disorders and multi-morbidity across substance use disorders and other mental health disorders is higher among those experiencing homelessness than the general population (Baggett et al., 2013, 2014; Bassuk et al., 1998; Drake et al., 1991; Fazel et al., 2008, 2014; Fichter & Quadflieg, 2001; Glasser & Zywiak, 2003; Goering et al., 2002; Madianos et al., 2013; Palepu et al., 2013; Spicer et al., 2015; Teesson et al., 2000, 2003; Vila-Rodriguez et al., 2013). The literature also points to the fact that homeless people experience higher rates of long-term physical health conditions, particularly infectious diseases, than the general population (Fazel et al., 2014)”;

“Internationally, there is strong evidence that the recurrent cost of homelessness assistance and support is largely, if not totally, offset by cost offsets relating to reduced use of highcost institutional health facilities, contacts with justice services and other welfare services providing an economic as well as a social reason for government to provide homelessness support (see, e.g. Conroy et al., 2014; Corporation of Supportive Housing, 2004; Culhane et al., 2002; Flatau & Zaretzky, 2008; Flatau et al., 2012; Johnson et al., 2014; Parsell et al., 2016; Pleace, 2015; Pleace et al., 2013; Van Leerdam, 2013; Wood et al., 2016; Zaretzky & Flatau, 2013)”;

“There is also a growing body of evidence, primarily from Northern America, that a model where housing is provided quickly combined with ongoing wrap around support (for example, a Housing First (HF) or a Common Ground model) is an effective and cost-efficient manner in which to reduce homelessness and can provide better outcomes than other approaches, particularly for people with mental and physical health issues (Busch-Geertsema, 2013; Groton, 2013; Gulcur et al., 2003; Ly & Latimer, 2015; Sillanpaa, 2013; Van Leerdam, 2013; Pleace, 2015)”;

Jane Bullen (2015) Governing Homelessness: The Discursive and Institutional Construction of Homelessness in Australia, Housing, Theory and Society, 32:2, 218-239, DOI: 10.1080/14036096.2015.1024886.

“On the one hand, a structuralist ideology focuses on the role of the state in addressing social need and highlights underlying social and economic factors such as housing market conditions, poverty, unemployment, domestic violence and the extent of provision of social services in explaining homelessness (Jacobs, Kemeny, and Manzi 1999; Neale 1997; Somerville 2013). On the other hand, a minimalist ideology tends to focus on individual pathology, the personal characteristics, behaviours and needs of homeless people. Structural and individual explanations are linked to the notions of “deserving” and “undeserving” (Neale 1997)”;

““Performance management”, introduced as a means to form the diverse nongovernment organizations that assisted homeless people into a regulated service system operating “beyond the state”, involved accountability techniques derived from business that reflected individual situations and assistance but not broader issues. “Case management” was also introduced involving a specific form of support focussed on individual change as the response to homelessness, consistent with the goals of welfare reform”;

“Some literature (Bessant 2001; Parsell and Marston 2012; Somerville 2013) shows how concepts such as “at risk” that are used to identify those who experience “social exclusion” are used in some research on homelessness as though they were objective and measurable empirical data, without acknowledgement of how they are actively constructed and framed through discourses and practices that assume that homeless individuals are central to the “problem” of homelessness”;

“In his lecture on Governmentality (1991), Foucault considers the emergence of “modern” government in Europe from the seventeenth century, whereby the focus of rule moved away from the preservation of the sovereign and became concerned with governing and managing the population, using modern forms of discipline, administration and statistical techniques. Foucault (1991) makes three points that are conceptually significant for this research. The first is that modern government is a problematizing activity that “poses the obligations of rulers in terms of the problems they seek to address” (Rose and Miller 1992, 181), in comparison with pre-modern or early modern forms of government which were founded on “natural or divine laws” (Foucault 1991, 97)”;

Bernie Pauly Bruce Wallace Kathleen Perkin , (2014),"Approaches to evaluation of homelessness interventions", Housing, Care and Support, Vol. 17 Iss 4 pp. 177 – 187.

“Homelessness is an outcome of a complex interplay of individual, systemic, and structural factors (Gaetz et al., 2013a). Explanations that seek to grapple with the complexity of homelessness aim to be inclusive of both individual experiences and structural causes (Fitzpatrick, 2005). Traditional “individual” explanations of homelessness focus on personal characteristics and behaviors while “structural” explanations focus on the broader social and economic structures such as the labor market, social assistance programming and the housing market (Fitzpatrick, 2005)”;

“Factors such as the availability of affordable housing and welfare reform play a significant role in the success of transitional housing programs (Dordick, 2002; Barrow and Zimmer, 1999; Burt, 2010). Barrow and Zimmer (1999) state, “Transitional housing can only be effectively implemented in the context of a continuum of resources that includes adequate permanent housing and the supportive community-based services that can prevent returns to homelessness” (p. 2)”;

Suzanne Fitzpatrick (2005) Explaining Homelessness: a Critical Realist Perspective, Housing, Theory and Society, 22:1, 1-17, DOI: 10.1080/14036090510034563.

“Realism has been used to challenge both ‘‘positivist’’ and ‘‘interpretivist’’ approaches to ‘‘causation’’ in the social world. Positivists traditionally adopt David Hume’s ‘‘constant conjunctions’’ theory of causality which, in modern terminology, translates into the search for observable ‘‘empirical regularities’’, that is, statistically significant correlations between ‘‘variables’’ (Hollis 1994). ‘‘Interpretivists’’, on the other hand, are primarily concerned with the ‘‘meanings’’ people attach to social situations, with some arguing that human actions are not governed by ‘‘cause’’ and ‘‘effect’’ at all, but rather by the rules that we use to interpret the social world (Williams & May 1996). Realists concur with many aspects of the interpretivist critique of positivism – and in particular acknowledge the centrality of human perceptions and reasoning to the study of social science – but do not accept that social science can be reduced wholly to the interpretation of meaning: … there is much more to the social world than agent’s understandings of it. [In particular] real structures in the social world can impose themselves upon agents both in a way they do not understand and without agents’ knowledge of their existence. (Williams 2003) While realists ‘‘rescue’’ causality from the dismissal of interpretivists, their definition is entirely different to that of the positivists. They regard causal powers as necessary tendencies of social objects and structures which may or may not be activated (and produce ‘‘actual’’ effects) depending on conditions (Sayer 1992). The presence of other (contingently related) causal mechanisms may often – or even always – prevent correspondence between cause and effect, which is why the presence (or absence) of empirical regularities is not a reliable guide to the (non-)existence of ‘‘real’’ causal powers. Realist explanations of actual social events and phenomena are not ‘‘mono-causal’’ and deterministic, but rather ‘‘complex’’ (with intricate feedback loops linking multiple causal mechanisms); ‘‘emergent’’ (from this complexity new properties may emerge which cannot be deduced from the individual components); and ‘‘non-linear’’ (small changes in these complex relationships can bring about sudden and dramatic outcomes) (Byrne 1998, 1999, Williams 2001, 2003).

Social structures are central to the realist analysis of causation, and are defined by Sayer (1992) as ‘‘sets of internally related objects or practices’’ existing at a range of levels:

Contrary to common assumption, structures include not only big social objects such as the international division of labour but small ones at the interpersonal and personal levels (e.g. conceptual structures) and still smaller non-social ones at the neurological level and beyond. (p. 92) Unlike many natural structures, social structures are only relatively enduring (Stones 2001); the most durable are argued to be those which ‘‘…lock their occupants into situations which they cannot unilaterally change and yet in which it is possible to change between existing positions’’ (Sayer 1992:95–96). As social structures are dependent on human actors to reproduce them, people can also effect their transformation. At the same time, these pre-existing structures constrain (and enable) human actions, with some people having more options allowed them by structures than others (the comparison between Giddens’ ‘‘structuration’’ theory and the ‘‘analytical dualism’’ of realist ontology is discussed below)”;