Available Open Access under CC-BY-NC licence. The number of people experiencing homelessness is rising in the majority of advanced western economies. Responses to these rising numbers are variable but broadly include elements of congregate emergency accommodation, long-term supported accommodation, survivalist services and degrees of coercion. It is evident that these policies are failing. Using contemporary research, policy and practice examples, this book uses the Irish experience to argue that we need to urgently reimagine homelessness as a pattern of residential instability and economic precariousness regularly experienced by marginal households. Bringing to light stark evidence, it proves that current responses to homelessness only maintain or exacerbate this instability rather than arrest it and provides a robust evidence base to reimagine how we respond to homelessness.

The Research Handbook on Homelessness presents a comprehensive account of the current knowledge and understanding of homelessness, the substantial challenges it presents and the latest developments in responding to the issue. Bringing together 54 of the worldÕs leading scholars in this field, this multidisciplinary Research Handbook acknowledges the increasing interest in homelessness across various academic disciplines and highlights the constant evolution of this issue, as well as the research methods that accompany it.

The Routledge Handbook of Homelessness brings together many of the world’s leading scholars in the field to provide a cutting-edge overview of classic and current research and future trends in the subject. Comprising 41 chapters and divided into four sections, the handbook includes A comprehensive introduction to homelessness, referring to history, culture, causation and definitions. Contemporary and historical debates around homelessness in different academic disciplines. Homelessness relating to gender, sexuality, youth, families, migration, rurality, veterans and health. A range of country-specific studies to illustrate the ways in which homelessness is researched and understood around the world. Methods of engagement and modes of analysis. With contributors from around the world and editors from the Centre of Housing Policy at the University of York, this handbook provides a groundbreaking and authoritative guide to theory, method and the primary interdisciplinary debates of today on homelessness. It will be essential reading for students, academics and professionals across the disciplines of sociology, human geography, public policy, housing policy, social policy, social work, economics and criminology.

This handbook provides a comprehensive global survey and assessment of the law and policy relating to homelessness prevention. Homelessness is regarded internationally as one of the most pressing issues facing humanity and one of the greatest social challenges of our times. This has been further amplified as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic. Across the globe, there is an enormous divergence in both experiences of and responses to homelessness from governments and state actors. This handbook examines how different jurisdictions from across all five continents of the world have encountered, framed and responded to homelessness. Written by expert scholars and leaders in their field, the book engages in a multidisciplinary and comparative analysis of homelessness as an issue of acute social concern. Understandings of homelessness are geographically, culturally and historically situated, making analysis of each jurisdiction’s approach by a national expert deeply insightful. The collection examines legal and extra-legal policy interventions targeted at reducing or preventing homelessness from across the globe. Drawing on diverse perspectives, differing cultures and welfare regimes, it thus constitutes a timely evaluation of current approaches to homelessness internationally. This book will appeal to students and scholars of homelessness, sociology, social policy, anthropology, and urban sociology, as well as international and national policymakers.

A four-session interactive Bible study, based on the documentary Americans with No Address, that examines the biblical response to people experiencing homelessness. Homelessness is not an “issue”; it’s an opportunity for the church to love our neighbors. In this four-session interactive Bible study, we examine what Scripture has to say on the topic. A companion to the documentary Americans with No Address and the full-length theatrical movie No Address (starring Ashanti, William Baldwin, Beverly D’Angelo, and Xander Berkeley), this study teaches participants: The root causes of different types of homelessness. How to engage rather than enable. The importance of collaboration among existing agencies. How to mobilize their church to follow Jesus’ call to serve. Each session includes: Facts, true stories, and background about the people who experience homelessness in America. QR code for quick link to online videos. Discussion questions for churches and small groups. Perspective from the Bible. “Go and Do” action steps. Ideas for further resources. Prayer prompts and reflection questions. The government can’t solve homelessness alone. The nonprofit sector can’t solve it alone. But neighbors loving neighbors, working together, can make a difference for the people who are experiencing homelessness in America. No Address equips Christians to lead the way.

A cutting-edge, solutions-oriented analysis of how we can reimagine cities around the world to build sustainable futures. What would it take to make urban places greener, more affordable, more equitable, and healthier for everyone? In recent years, cities have stepped up efforts to address climate and sustainability crises. But progress has not been fast enough or gone deep enough. If communities are to thrive in the future, we need to quickly imagine and implement an entirely new approach to urban development: one that is centered on equity and rethinks social, political, and economic systems as well as urban designs. With attention to this need for structural change, Reimagining Sustainable Cities advocates for a community-informed model of racially, economically, and socially just cities and regions. The book aims to rethink urban sustainability for a new era. In Reimagining Sustainable Cities, Stephen M. Wheeler and Christina D. Rosan ask big-picture questions of interest to readers worldwide: How do we get to carbon neutrality? How do we adapt to a climate-changed world? How can we create affordable, inclusive, and equitable cities? While many books dwell on the analysis of problems, Reimagining Sustainable Cities prioritizes solutions-oriented thinking—surveying historical trends, providing examples of constructive action worldwide, and outlining alternative problem-solving strategies. Wheeler and Rosan use a social ecology lens and draw perspectives from multiple disciplines. Positive, readable, and constructive in tone, Reimagining Sustainable Cities identifies actions ranging from urban design to institutional restructuring that can bring about fundamental change and prepare us for the challenges ahead.

The COVID-19 pandemic has posed significant risks to particular communities and individuals, including indigenous communities, migrant workers, refugees, transgender individuals, and the homeless population. The disadvantaged population is overwhelmed by deprivation, inequality, unemployment, and infections, both communicable and non-communicable, which make them more vulnerable to COVID-19 and its negative consequences. These marginalized groups struggle to obtain an admirable political representation and face marginalization and lack of access to health, education, and social services. It is imperative that these marginalized groups and their right to life and their livelihoods are supported, especially when they are put at risk during global crises, such as the COVID-19 pandemic. The Handbook of Research on the Impact of COVID-19 on Marginalized Populations and Support for the Future represents a way of acknowledging an improved, pandemic-free, and prosperous environment for everyone in the future where society does not leave behind any poor or marginalized individuals. The book is a representation of the voice of the marginalized people in the new normal attempting to draw on a comprehensive knowledge bank, which includes anthropology, sociology, gender studies, media, education, indigenous dimension, philosophy, bioethics, care ethics, and more. This book focuses solely on the marginalized people, examines the oppressed communities in depth, and provides insights on how we should stand by these vulnerable people. This book is a valuable tool for social workers, government bodies, policymakers, social justice advocates, human rights activists, researchers in gender and race studies, practitioners, academicians, and students interested in how COVID-19 has impacted marginalized populations and how social justice can be advocated for in the future.

While urban life can be characterized by endeavors to settle stable and safe environments, for many people, urban space is rarely stable or safe; it is uncertain, troubled, imbued with challenges and perpetually under pressure. As the concept of unsettled appears to define the contemporary urban experience, this multidisciplinary book investigates the conflicts and possibilities of settling and unsettling through open and speculative analysis. The analytical prism of unsettled renders urban space an indeterminate ground unfolding through routines, temporalities and contestations in constant tension between settling and unsettling. Such contrasting experiences are contingent on how urban societies confront, undergo and overcome turbulence and difficulties in time and space. Contributions drawing on theoretical reflections and empirical accounts—from Argentina, Austria, Germany, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, the UAE, the UK, the USA and Vietnam—give insights into plural occurrences of the unsettled, which might tie down or unleash transformative, liberatory and emancipatory potentials. This book is for students, professionals and researchers interested in the uncertainties, foundations, disturbances, inconsistencies, residuals and blind fields, which constitute the urban both as lived space and as social, cultural and political ideal.

Homeless assistance has frequently adhered to the “three hots and a cot” model, which prioritizes immediate material needs but may fail to address the political and social exclusion of people experiencing homelessness. In this study, Loehwing reconsiders typical characterizations of homelessness, citizenship, and democratic community through unconventional approaches to homeless advocacy and assistance. While conventional homeless advocacy rhetoric establishes the urgency of homeless suffering, it also implicitly invites housed publics to understand homelessness as a state of abnormality that destines the individuals suffering it to life outside the civic body. In contrast, Loehwing focuses on atypical models of homeless advocacy: the meal-sharing initiatives of Food Not Bombs, the international competition of the Homeless World Cup, and the annual Homeless Persons’ Memorial Day campaign. She argues that these modes of unconventional homeless advocacy provide rhetorical exemplars of a type of inclusive and empowering civic discourse that is missing from conventional homeless advocacy and may be indispensable for overcoming homeless marginalization and exclusion in contemporary democratic culture. Loehwing’s interrogation of homeless advocacy rhetorics demonstrates how discursive practices shape democratic culture and how they may provide a potential civic remedy to the harms of disenfranchisement, discrimination, and displacement. This book will be welcomed by scholars whose work focuses on the intersections of democratic theory and rhetorical and civic studies, as well as by homelessness advocacy groups.

Homelessness is a punishing condition that inflicts unquestionable harm on those who experience it. It is also a social problem that starkly lays bare deep societal failure. As Cameron Parsell shows, society – along with the public policy measures intended to address it – treats being homeless as an identity, casting those who experience homelessness as fundamentally different from “us.” To be homeless is to face daily victimization, to be a recipient of someone else’s care, and to have autonomy taken away. Parsell argues that we have at our disposal the knowledge and momentum to demonstrably reduce and even end homelessness. Our first task is to confront the fact that homelessness is a relatively predictable phenomenon that disproportionately impacts people who are failed by society in myriad ways. We must respond to the problem in ways that understand and thus do not recreate the dehumanizing conditions experienced by those who are homeless. Homelessness is a choice: of how we organize society. Sketching the defining features of homelessness, this critical introduction will be a valuable resource for students studying homelessness, housing, marginality, and poverty across the social sciences and social work.