Housing the homeless: How revisiting the 1940s assists the struggle

Abstract

AbstractA major obstacle in the political work of housing the homeless is convincing voters and lawmakers that housing is a right and should be available to all without conditions. This paper seeks to assist that project by showing that the tension between rights and conditions has a history. It focusses on the pivotal 1940s, which saw the first major investment in public housing and the first surveys of two relevant problem populations—“the problem family” and “the homeless”. Those surveys used the language of eugenics, psychology and moral censure to perpetuate conditionality, while the call for housing as a right invested in the agency of “the people”. And the people wanted to be heard. Analysing the complex ways in which conditions on housing operated at this turning point enlarges and variegates the canvas on which contemporary understandings draw. It not only offers sobering insight into how the entrenching of marginalisation occurred but also informs the sense of contingency that might nourish serious reform.