Meaning Of Homelessness Research Articles

“On the Street, the Only Person You Gotta Bow Down to Is Yourself”: Masculinity, Homelessness, and Incarceration

Despite the well-established link between homelessness and incarceration, very little qualitative research has focused on the social processes that underlie this nexus. In this article, I draw on 19 in-depth interviews with incarcerated men who reported pre-prison housing instability, supplemented with 5 interviews with formerly-incarcerated men experiencing homelessness, to explore the gendered nature of the homelessness-incarceration nexus. I propose the concept of “liberative instability”—defined as an unfettered lifestyle characterized by double-edged freedom and independence—to explore the changing meaning of homelessness in men’s narratives of their life course. Additionally, I explore how themes of masculinity and liberative instability are embedded in men’s narratives of freedom and confinement as they reflect on their experiences with homelessness and incarceration. These findings animate existing quantitative research by highlighting that the homelessness-incarceration nexus cannot be understood fully or disrupted without considering the significance of age-graded cultural scripts regarding masculinity.

A qualitative examination of masculinity, homelessness, and social class among men in a transitional shelter.

This study explored the intersection and meaning of homelessness, masculinity, and social class among 15 men who are homeless. Using Consensual Qualitative Research Methodology (Hill, Thompson, & Williams, 1997), three major domains arose from the data: The Homeless Experience, Perceptions of Men and Masculinity, and Changing Social Status. Participants described (a) gaining empathy for the homeless after they became homeless; (b) economic, personal, and substance use and abuse as barriers to moving out of homelessness; (c) retaining their sense of masculinity regardless of being homeless; and (d) aspirations for a better, non-homeless future. Men also discussed the importance of mental health and substance abuse services. Implications for psychologists and future research are discussed.

Hart, M. and M. Ben-Yoseph (Eds.). PSYCHOLOGICAL, POLITICAL AND CULTURAL MEANINGS OF HOME

Hart, M. and M. Ben-Yoseph (Eds.). PSYCHOLOGICAL, POLITICALAND CULTURAL MEANINGS OF HOME. New York: Haworth Press, 2005.The analysis of has received relatively less attention in the social sciences than in the arts where literature, painting and music have given voice, colour and sound to the meaning of in different cultures throughout the ages. For that reason, I was keen to read what the contributors (all from DePaul University in Chicago) wrote about the psychological, political and cultural of home.The two editors, Mechthild Hart, a Professor of Education, and Miriam Ben-Yoseph, also an education specialist, wrote the introduction Shifting meanings of home and put together this collection of ten papers. The book was published concurrently as a set of articles in the Journal of Prevention & Intervention in the Community (Volume 30 Numbers 1 -2,2005). addition to the introductory chapter there are nine substantive chapters.Chapter 2 Facing aliens under globalization: changing meanings of for employers of foreign domestics is a discussion of the situation of 12 foreign domestic and their employers in Taipei by sociologist SJ. A. Cheng. While the 12 cases were described in detail, they do not justify Cheng's generalization of her findings to all Taiwanese employers of domestic workers (p.24).Chapter 3 Home as a locus of work and career by management specialist Lisa K. Gundry is a review of selected studies and statistics on the American trend to locate one's office at and offers some suggestions on pitfalls to avoid and things to do when moving your office home. Unfortunately, this orientation of the chapter sets it apart from the other contributions as it is the only chapter that addresses potential home-office owners and offers recommendations.The fourth chapter presents an unusual and absorbing topic: Convents as homes. The author, Enrique A. Arias, writing as a music historian, wrote a well-documented historical depiction of the convent or monastery as centre of Gregorian music and convent inhabitants as people dedicated to the artistic expression of worship through music. The author's erudite comments gave me the impression that he had much more knowledge to share. The editor indicated that this piece was part of Arias' larger study on the role of Gregorian chant. Regrettably, E.A. Arias passed away when the volume went into print.Educationist Ann F. Stanford discusses the prison as in Chapter 5 Where love flies free: women, and writing in Cook County Jail. Stanford relates her own experiences running creative writing (mainly poetry) workshops for inmates mainly in terms of the impact that the close contact with prison life has had on her own ideas of house and home.Chapter 6 follows the same theme of creative writing. Entitled In the absence of home: the meaning of homelessness it was written by Susanne M. Dumbleton, also an education specialist. This chapter focuses on how imaginative writers can give voice to the (pp. 58-59) in the way they present the homeless in fiction. Dumbleton illustrates her point with numerous lengthy quotations from a few celebrated American fiction writers. …

Routes to home: homelessness and home-making in contrasting societies

It is not possible to understand the full experience and meaning of homelessness without examining the relative meanings and experiences of home. Being at home is more than having adequate shelter and is as much about being placed in a particular social world. This paper explores ways in which processes of home-making and the goal of home may form part of a route to belonging for disadvantaged groups who share a marginalised place in their respective societies. To examine these ideas, data from empirical case studies from two contrasting contexts are presented: homeless young people in London and Dublin and informal dwellers in Colombia. These cross-disciplinary studies offer insights into how it is possible to move from positions of relative social exclusion towards the goal of home and hence of belonging and acceptance. Central to this is an understanding of people's conceptions of home and the activities of home-making.

Urban Homelessness: Psychological Outcomes for Mothers and Children

Homelessness is a phenomenon that has been a part of the American lifestyle since colonial times. The meaning of homelessness has changed many times since the early years of the colonial settlements with different definitions emerging in response to national and regional situations. Since the mid-eighteenth century, homelessness has increased in times of economic difficulty and declined during periods of prosperity or with the outbreak of war. In previous centuries, the homeless poor were supported by family members. This system of relief usually remedied breaks in the family structure. Since poverty was virtually uncommon, the community regarded these people as their wards and assumed responsibility for those in distress. Little stigma was attached to homelessness because it was generally felt to be due to circumstances beyond one's control.CURRENT STATUS OF THE HOMELESSOver the last century, an increase in homelessness has been largely attributed to an increase in unemployment, underemployment, and poverty in general. Currently, the nature and scale of homelessness differs depending on the definition used. While the U. S. Bureau of the Census does not define homelessness, it has adopted the definition of the U. S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). A person is considered homeless if his or her nighttime residence is in either (a) public or private emergency shelters (schools, church basements, governmental buildings, former firehouses) or where temporary vouchers are provided by private or public agencies (hotels, apartments, or boarding homes); or (b) streets, parks, subways, bus terminals, railroad stations, airports, abandoned buildings without utilities, cars, trucks, under bridges or aqueducts, or in any other public or private space that is not designed as shelter (HUD, 1984). HUD's definition excludes residents of halfway houses and long-term detoxification centers. However, it does include those individuals temporarily detained in a local jail who would normally be on the street or in emergency shelters. Also included as homeless are battered women housed in temporary shelters.National estimates of homelessness continue to fluctuate greatly. The 1990 Census found that approximately 400,000 Americans were homeless, while advocacy groups have put the figure between 700,000 and 3 million. More current data suggest that there may be as many as over a million actual homeless individuals at any given time in the continental United States--with as many as three million people experiencing homelessness at some time each year. According to recent estimates, some 13.5 million Americans have been homeless for at least a few days sometime during their lives; and an additional 12.5 million have stayed off the street only by moving in with friends at some point in their lives, for periods that ranged from a few days to a year (Link, 1994). These data minimize current beliefs that homelessness is an aberration affecting Americans who have distinct personal histories or who are situated on the fringes of society.HOMELESSNESS IN DETROITThe Detroit area, with a population of approximately 2.2 million residents, represents approximately 25% of Michigan's 9.1 million residents. The Detroit area ranks sixth in population size among major urban areas in the United States. Generally, the rate of homelessness is higher in larger cities than in smaller cities (Hopper & Hamberg, 1990). However, until recently there has been very little formal data on Detroit's homeless population.Unlike other cities in the U. S. where many of the homeless sleep on streets or in parks, the homeless of Detroit most often sleep in abandoned buildings. It has been estimated that over 27,000 people are homeless each year in the Detroit metropolitan area alone, with an average of 500 in need of shelter daily (Mobray, Solarz, Johnson, Phillips & Combs, 1986; Solarz, 1988). In 1989, there were over 1,500 emergency shelter beds in the city of Detroit. …

Children with no place to call home: Survival in the cars and on the streets

The author reports the results of a study about how 200 children between the ages of 6 and 12 understand and cope. with their homelessness. This study is theoretically framed and empirically grounded in the person-in-environment tradition of social work. Data collected through interviews with the children and questionnaires completed by their teachers were subjected to qualitative and quantitative analysis. Statistically significant differences in psychosocial functioning in the classroom, personal meaning of homelessness, and coping with concept of self as homeless were found between the 65 children identified as academically successful and the 135 identified as demonstrating academic problems.

Homelessness and mental illness: who resorts to state hospitals?

Mental illness among the homeless is a topic which has received much attention in the last few years. Most studies in this field have examined the incidence and prevalence of mental illness among the residents of temporary shelters, missions and SRO hotels. Using data from a broader policy study of community mental health, this study addresses the issue of mental illness and homelessness from a different direction. By examining the incidence and subjective meaning of homelessness among patients in state hospitals, this study attempts to understand the relationship between homelessness, illness and the admission process. It was found that a significant portion (18 percent) of hospitalized mental patients attributed their admission to problems in housing. This group uses the hospital as a resource in their lives, admitting themselves to the hospital to replace inadequate social networks. For such patients, a mental hospital admission reflects a rational decision, based on his/her understanding of the limited options for care in an age of deinstitutionalization.