Environmental Disposition Types of Homeless Supportive Housing Residents : Focused on H House Cases in Seoul

Abstract

Homelessness has increased due to radical industrialization and economic crisis in Korea. Recently, supportive housing has begun to be distributed along with social welfare policies. Supportive housing for the homeless, often use existing rental houses, and it is necessary to be planned customer-oriented. Supportive housing should be more inclusive than general housing, which needs to accumulate knowledge about residents. The purpose of this study is to type in the environmental disposition of homeless supportive housing residents. More specifically, this study identifies the composite types of the environmental disposition analyzed in the previous study: territoriality (occupation/order) privacy (interaction/permission). For this study, field experts were transferred to the research team for unobtrusive observation. 47 data were collected in January 2019, equivalent to the total residents of “H house.” The data include quantitative part on the degree of the environmental disposition and qualitative part on expert’s observations. SPSS gave hierarchical cluster analysis method, resulting in a total of 12 environmental disposition types. The proportion of the types are Empty/Tidy/Alone/Closed, Filled/Messy/Alone/Closed, Filled/Tidy/Interact/Open, Empty/Tidy/Interact/ Open, Filled/Messy/Interact/Closed, Empty/Tidy/Alone/Open, Filled/Messy/Interact/Open, Filled/Messy/Interact/Closed, Empty/Tidy/Interact/Medium, Empty/Messy/Interact/Closed, Empty/Messy/Alone/Closed, Empty/Messy/Interact/Open. Environmental disposition types of residents varied with heterogeneity. Supportive housing should be planned to promote the healing and adaptation according to residents’ characteristics and to enable efficient maintenance. This study will contribute to the development of future housing planning by understanding of the customers.