Governing homelessness through instruments: a critical perspective on housing first’s policy instrumentation

Abstract

ABSTRACT In recent years, Housing First (HF) has become a prevalent public response to homelessness in North America. In Canada, several communities have been called upon to implement a system-wide HF orientation. Based on an ethnographic study in Ottawa (Canada), this article focuses on HF’s policy implementation process and, specifically, on ‘policy instrumentation,’ the modalities by which a governmental action is concretely implemented using ‘instruments,’ seemingly technical or neutral tools and procedures for delivering policy at a local level. This article will analyze more closely the Service Prioritization Decision Assistance Tool (SPDAT) used by frontline homelessness services in over one thousand communities across the United States, Canada, and Australia to assist in identifying, selecting, and prioritizing HF’s beneficiaries. By analyzing the rationale and effects of this tool, we argue that HF reveals a neoliberal art of governing homelessness, which aims to tackle, at a macro-level, the wider biopolitical issue of the aging baby boomer population and reinforces, at a micro- level, intersectional inequalities within the homeless population.