A Turning Point? Responses to COVID-19 Within the Homelessness Industrial Complex

Abstract

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic affected the homeless serving sector in significant ways, including impacts on service users and service providers. In this qualitative case study from Ottawa, Canada, we conducted 28 semi-structured interviews with service providers and key informants from the homeless serving sector to learn more about responses to the pandemic. We argue that, as it is currently designed, the homeless serving sector had limited opportunity to respond to the combined crises in housing, overdose, and COVID-19 with a transformative agenda. The article draws on Dej’s (2020) concept of the homelessness industrial complex, which argues that current systems manage and sustain rather than end homelessness. And we use Lipsky’s (1969; 1980) notion of street-level bureaucracy to explore the role of service providers as they translated shifting public health guidelines into action on the ground within contexts of ambiguity and constraint. Service providers were tasked with keeping people safe from COVID-19 while managing broader social issues such as homelessness, food insecurity, mental health challenges, and an increasingly poisoned illicit drug supply. They described challenges such as narrowly directed funding and short-term and temporary solutions to homelessness. Staff faced significant occupational stress and burnout within demoralizing contexts (Kerman & Kidd, 2021; Kerman et al., 2022). Despite new partnerships and innovative approaches that emerged, responses to the pandemic in Ottawa were shaped by the homelessness industrial complex and did not significantly contribute to ending homelessness. Even so, public health measures were able to disrupt business as usual in the sector, sparking the question: what might be possible if homelessness comes to be understood as a public health crisis?